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CCHORIGHT BEKQSffi 



ESSAYS 

SPECULATIVE AND POLITICAL 
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 



ESSAYS 

SPECULATIVE AND POLITICAL 



BY THE 

Rt. Hon. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

M.A., F.R.S., LL.D.. D.C.L. 
AUTHOR OF "THEISM AND HUMANISM," "THE 
FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF," ETC. 




NEW XBlr YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



AC* 



COPYRIGHT, 1921, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

m -2 i92i 
g)CLA608967 



PREFACE 

In this volume I have collected Essays, Lectures 
and some occasional pieces written during the last 
twelve years. They touch on subjects of the most 
varied character, ranging from a revue of M. 
Bergson's U 'Evolution C\r Patrice to brief Notes on 
"Zionism" and "The Freedom of the Seas." I do 
not expect, I need hardly say, that even the most 
friendly reader will take an interest in them all; 
though perhaps he may, here and there, find some- 
thing to meet his individual tastes. 

I have roughly divided them into groups, about 
one of which a special word of explanation and 
apology is perhaps necessary — the group relating 
to Germany. Of these the first in date is an article 
on Anglo-German relations, written at the request 
of Professor Dr. Ludwig Stein in 1912 for the 
well-known periodical Nord und Sild; the second is 
a review of Treitschke's Lectures on "Politics"; 
the third is the Note on "The Freedom of the Seas" 
already referred to ; and the last is a reprint of the 
Official Dispatch on the Allied objects in the War 



vi PREFACE 

which I wrote in January 1917. Of these the 
first was written entirely for German readers; the 
third, in the main, for American friends ; while the 
fourth was the British reply to President Wilson's 
request for a statement of the objects of the En- 
tente Powers in the War. All these Papers were 
occasional, and one of them was official; but, in a 
certain sense, they form a series representing the 
contemporary thoughts of at least one individual 
concerned with the various stages in the great 
drama which ended in June 1919. 

To some readers the Paper of 1912 may seem 
lacking in the emphasis of its warnings. But it 
was written, as I have already said, for the Ger- 
man public, at the request of a German editor, who, 
without doubt, sincerely desired to improve the 
relations between Germany and Britain. The 
object was a laudable one, with which I heartily 
sympathised; and it certainly would not have been 
promoted by the adoption of too controversial a 
tone. 

As the interest of some of these Papers, if they 
have any interest, depends in part upon the date 
at which they were written, I have in no case 
altered the sense of the text, though here and there 
I have made slight verbal improvements. 

My thanks are due to the Editors of the various 



PREFACE vii 

books and journals in which any of these Essays 
may have originally appeared for permission to re- 
publish them. 

A. J. B. 
Whittingehame, 
October, 1920 



CONTENTS 

PART ONE: SPECULATIVE 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Decadence 13 

Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, Cambridge, 1908 



II Beauty: and the Criticism of Beauty 57 
Romanes Memorial Lecture, Oxford, 1909 



III Bergson's Creative Evolution ... 99 
Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Hibbert Jour- 
nal, 1911. 



IV Francis Bacon 137 

Tercentenary Celebration at Gray's Inn, 1912 



V Psychical Research ...... 153 

Presidential Address, 1894 



x CONTENTS 

PART TWO: POLITICAL 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI Anglo-German Relations .... 177 



Written for Nord und Sud, 1912 

VII Treitschke's View of German World- 
Policy 189 

Introduction to the English translation of 
his Lectures, 1916. 

VIII The Freedom of the Seas . . . . .211 
Reflections addressed to the American public 
in 1916. 



IX The Foundations of a Durable Peace 
The British Reply of January, 1917, to Pres- 
ident Wilson's dispatch to the Entente 
Powers requesting information as to their 
aims. 



X A Brief Note on Zionism .... 233 
The Introduction to The History of Zionism, 
by M. Sokolow. 



PART ONE: SPECULATIVE 
I: DECADENCE 



I 

DECADENCE x 

I must begin what I have to say with a warning 
and an apology. I must warn you that the present 
essay makes no pretence to be an adequate treat- 
ment of some compact and limited theme; but 
rather resembles those wandering trains of 
thought, where we allow ourselves the luxury of 
putting wide-ranging questions, to which our 
ignorance forbids any confident reply. I apologise 
for adopting a course which thus departs in some 
measure from familiar precedent. I admit its 
perils. But it is just possible that when a subject, 
or group of subjects, is of great inherent interest, 
even a tentative and interrogative treatment of it 
may be worth attempting. 

My subject, or at least my point of departure, 
is Decadence. I do not mean the sort of de- 
cadence often attributed to certain phases of 
artistic or literary development, in which an over- 
wrought technique, straining to express sentiments 

1 Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, delivered at Newnham 
College, January 25, 1908. 

13 



14 DECADENCE 



too subtle or too morbid, is deemed to have sup- 
planted the direct inspiration of an earlier and a 
simpler age. Whether these autumnal glories, 
these splendours touched with death, are recurring 
phenomena in the literary cycle; whether, if they 
be, they are connected with other forms of de- 
cadence, may be questions well worth asking and 
answering. But they are not the questions with 
which I am at present concerned. The decadence 
respecting which I wish to put questions is not 
specifically literary or artistic. It is the decadence 
which attacks, or is alleged to attack, great com- 
munities and historic civilisations : which is to socie- 
ties of men what senility is to man, and is often, 
like senility, the precursor and the cause of final 
dissolution. 

It is curious how deeply imbedded in ordinary 
discourse are traces of the conviction that 
childhood, maturity, and old age are stages in the 
corporate, as they are in the individual, life. "A 
young and vigorous nation," "a decrepit and mori- 
bund civilisation" — phrases like these, and scores 
of others containing the same implication, come as 
trippingly from the tongue as if they suggested no 
difficulty and called for no explanation. To 
Macaulay (unless I am pressing his famous meta- 
phor too far) it seemed natural that ages hence a 
young country like New Zealand should be 



DECADENCE 15 

flourishing, but not less natural that an old coun- 
try like England should have decayed; Berkeley, 
in a well-known stanza, tells how the drama of 
civilisation has slowly travelled westward to find 
its loftiest development, but also its final catas- 
trophe, in the New World; while every man who 
is weary, hopeless, or disillusioned talks as if his 
unhappy case was due to the decadent epoch in 
which his lot was cast. 

But why should civilisations thus wear out and 
great communities decay? and what evidence is 
there that, in fact, they do? These questions, 
though I cannot give to them any conclusive 
answers, are of much more than a merely theoretic 
interest. For if current modes of speech take De- 
cadence for granted, with still greater confidence 
do they speak of Progress as assured. Yet if both 
are real they can hardly be studied apart, they must 
evidently limit and qualify each other in actual 
experience, and they cannot be isolated in specula- 
tion. 

Though antiquity, Pagan and Christian, took 
a different view, it seems easier, a priori, to under- 
stand Progress than Decadence. Even if Progress 
be arrested, as presumably it must be, by the 
limitation of human faculty, we should expect the 
ultimate boundary to be capable of indefinite ap- 
proach, and we should not expect that any part of 



16 DECADENCE 

the road towards it, once traversed, would have to 
be retraced. Even in the organic world, decay and 
death, familiar though they be, are phenomena that 
call for scientific explanation. And Weismann 
has definitely asked how it comes about that the 
higher organisms grow old and die, seeing that old 
age and death are not inseparable characteristics 
of living protoplasm, and that the simplest organ- 
isms suffer no natural decay, perishing, when they 
do perish, by accident, starvation, or specific 
disease. 

The answer he gives to his own question is that 
the death of the individual is so useful to the race, 
that Natural Selection has, in all but the very 
lowest species, exterminated the potentially im- 
mortal. 

One is tempted to inquire whether this in- 
genious explanation could be so modified as to 
apply not merely to individuals, but to communi- 
ties. Is it needful, in the interests of civilisation 
as a whole, that the organised embodiment of each 
particular civilisation, if and when its free develop- 
ment is arrested, should make room for younger 
and more vigorous competitors? And if so can 
we find in Natural Selection the mechanism by 
which the principle of decay and dissolution shall 
be so implanted in the very nature of human socie- 



DECADENCE 17 

ties as to secure that a due succession among them 
shall always be maintained? 

To this second question the answer must, I think, 
be in the negative. The struggle for existence be- 
tween different races and different societies has 
admittedly played a great part in social develop- 
ment. But the extension of Weismann's idea from 
the organic to the social world, would imply a pro- 
longed competition between groups of communities 
in which decadence was the rule and groups in 
which it was not — ending in the survival of the first 
and the destruction of the second. The groups 
whose members suffered periodical decadence and 
dissolution would be the fittest to survive: just as, 
on Weismann's theory, those species which are con- 
stantly replacing the old by the young have an 
advantage in the competitive struggle. 

Few, however, will say that in the petty fragment 
of human history which alone is open to our inspec- 
tion, there is satisfactory evidence of any such long 
drawn process. Some may even be disposed to ask 
whether there is adequate evidence of such a phe- 
nomenon as decadence at all. And it must be 
acknowledged that the affirmative answer should 
be given with caution. Evidently we must not con- 
sider a diminution of national power, whether rela- 
tive or absolute, as constituting by itself a proof 
of national decadence. Holland is not decadent 



18 DECADENCE 

because her place in the hierarchy of European 
Powers is less exalted than it was two hundred 
and fifty years ago. Spain was not necessarily 
decadent at the end of the seventeenth century 
because she had exhausted herself in a contest far 
beyond her resources either in money or in men. 
It would, I think, be rash even to say that Venice 
was decadent at the end of the eighteenth century, 
though the growth of other Powers, and the diver- 
sion of the great trade routes, had shorn her of 
wealth and international influence. These are mis- 
fortunes which in the sphere of sociology corre- 
spond to accident or disease in the sphere of biology. 
And what we are concerned to know is whether in 
the sphere of sociology there is also anything cor- 
responding to the decay of old age — a decay which 
may be hastened by accident or disease, but is cer- 
tainly to be distinguished from both. 

However this question should be answered the 
cases I have cited are sufficient to show where the 
chief difficulty of the inquiry lies. Decadence, even 
if it be a reality, never acts in isolation. It is 
always complicated with, and often acts through, 
other more obvious causes. It is always therefore 
possible to argue that to these causes, not to the 
more elusive influences collectively described as 
"decadence," the decline and fall of great com- 
munities is really due. 



DECADENCE 19 

Yet there are historic tragedies which (as it 
seems to me) do most obstinately refuse to be thus 
simply explained. It is in vain that historians 
enumerate the public calamities which preceded, 
and no doubt contributed to, the final catastrophe. 
Civil dissensions, military disasters, pestilences, 
famines, tyrants, tax-gatherers, growing burdens 
and waning wealth — the gloomy catalogue is un- 
rolled before our eyes, yet somehow it does not in 
all cases wholly satisfy us; we feel that some of 
these diseases are of a kind which a vigorous body 
politic should easily be able to survive, that others 
are secondary symptoms of some obscurer malady, 
and that in neither case do they supply us with 
the full explanations of which we are in search. 

Consider, for instance, the long agony and final 
destruction of Roman Imperialism in the West, 
the most momentous catastrophe of which we have 
historic record. It has deeply stirred the imagina- 
tion of mankind, it has been the theme of great 
historians, it has been much explained by political 
philosophers, yet who feels that either historians 
or philosophers have laid bare the real secrets of 
the tragedy? Rome fell, and great was the fall of 
it. But why it fell, by what secret mines its de- 
fences were breached, and what made its garrison 
so faint-hearted and ineffectual — this is by no 
means clear. 



20 DECADENCE 

In order to measure adequately the difficulty of 
the problem, let us abstract our minds from his- 
torical details and compare the position of the 
Empire about the middle of the second century 
with its position in the middle of the third or again 
at the end of the fourth, and ask of what forces 
history gives us an account, sufficient in these 
periods to effect so mighty a transformation. Or, 
still better, imagine an observer equipped with our 
current stock of political wisdom, transported to 
Rome in the reign of Antoninus Pius or Marcus 
Aurelius, and in ignorance of the event, writing 
letters to the newspapers on the future destinies of 
the Empire. What would his forecast be ? 

We might suppose him to examine, in the first 
place, the military position of the State, its prob- 
able enemies, its capacities for defence. He would 
note that only on its eastern boundary was there 
an organised military Power capable of meeting 
Rome on anything like equal terms, and this only 
in the regions adjacent to their common frontier. 
For the rest, he would discover no civilised enemy 
along the southern boundary to the Atlantic or 
along its northern boundary from the Black Sea 
to the German Ocean. Warlike tribes indeed he 
would find in plenty: difficult to crush within the 
limits of their native forests and morasses, for- 
midable it may be in a raid, but without political 



DECADENCE 21 

cohesion, military unity, or the means of military 
concentration; troublesome, therefore, rather than 
dangerous. If reminded of Varus and his lost 
legions, he would ask of what importance, in the 
story of a world-power, could be the loss of a few 
thousand men surprised at a distance from their 
base amid the entanglements of a difficult and 
unknown country? Never, it would seem, was 
Empire more fortunately circumstanced for pur- 
poses of home defence. 

But (it might be thought) the burden of secur- 
ing frontiers of such length, even against merely 
tribal assaults, though easy from a strictly military 
point of view, might prove too heavy to be long 
endured. Yet the military forces scattered 
through the Roman Empire, though apparently 
adequate in the days of her greatness, would, 
according to modern ideas, seem hardly sufficient 
for purposes of police, let alone defence. An army 
corps or less was deemed enough to preserve what 
are now mighty kingdoms from internal disorder 
and external aggression. And if we compare with 
this the contributions, either in the way of money 
or of men, exacted from Mediterranean lands 
before the Empire came into being, or at any period 
of the world's history since it dissolved away, the 
comparison must, I suppose, be entirely in favour 
of the Empire. 



22 DECADENCE 

But burdens which seem light if measured by- 
area may be heavy if measured by ability to pay. 
Yet when has ability to pay been greater in the 
regions bordering the Southern and Eastern Medi- 
terranean than under the Roman Empire? Travel 
round it in imagination eastward from the 
Atlantic coast of Morocco till returning westward 
you reach the head of the Adriatic Gulf, and you 
will have skirted a region, still of immense natural 
wealth, once filled with great cities and fertile 
farms, better governed during the Empire than it 
has ever been governed since (at least till Algeria 
was ruled by the French and Egypt by the Brit- 
ish) ; including among its provinces what were 
great states before the Roman rule, and have been 
great states since that rule decayed, divided by no 
international jealousies, oppressed by no fear of 
conquest, enterprising, cultured. Remember that 
to estimate its area of taxation and recruiting you 
must add to these regions Bulgaria, Servia, much 
of Austria and Bavaria, Switzerland, Belgium, 
Italy, France, Spain, and most of Britain, and you 
have conditions favourable to military strength and 
economic prosperity rarely equalled in the modern 
world and never in the ancient. 

Our observer however might, very rightly, feel 
that a far-spreading Empire like that of Rome, 
including regions profoundly differing in race, 



DECADENCE 23 

history, and religion, would be liable to other 
dangers than those which arise from mere external 
aggression. One of the first questions, therefore, 
which he would be disposed to ask, is whether so 
heterogeneous a state was not in perpetual danger 
of dissolution through the disintegrating influence 
of national sentiments. He would learn, probably 
with a strong feeling of surprise, that with the 
single exception of the Jews, its constituent 
nations, once conquered, were not merely content 
to be parts of the Empire, but could scarcely 
imagine themselves as anything else; that the 
Imperial system appealed, not merely to the ma- 
terial needs of the component populations, but also 
to their imagination and their loyalty; that Gaul, 
Spain, and Britain, though but recently forced 
within the pale of civilisation, were as faithful to 
the Imperial ideal as the Greeks of Athens or the 
Hellenised Orientals of Syria; and that neither 
historic memories, nor local patriotism, nor dis- 
puted successions, nor public calamities, nor 
administrative divisions, ever really shook the sen- 
timent in favour of Imperial Unity. There might 
be more than one Emperor, but there could only 
be one Empire. Howsoever our observer might 
disapprove of the Imperial system he would there- 
fore have to admit that the Empire, with all its; 
shortcomings, its absolutism, and its bureaucracy, 



24 DECADENCE 

had solved more successfully than any government, 
before or since, the problem of devising a scheme 
which equally satisfied the sentiments of East and 
West; which respected local feelings, and encour- 
aged local government; in which the Celt, the 
Iberian, the Berber, the Egyptian, the Asiatic, the 
Greek, the Illyrian, the Italian were all at home, 
and which, though based on conquest, was accepted 
by the conquered as the natural organisation of the 
civilised world. 

Rome had thus unique sources of strength. 
What sources of weakness would our observer be 
likely to detect behind her imposing exterior? The 
diminution of population is the one which has 
(rightly I think) most impressed historians; and 
it is difficult to resist the evidence, either of the 
fact or of its disastrous consequences. I hesitate 
indeed to accept without qualification the accounts 
given us of the progressive decay of the native 
Italian stock from the days of the Gracchi to the 
disintegration of the Empire in the West; and 
when we read how the dearth of men was made 
good (in so far as it was made good) by the in- 
creasing inflow of slaves and adventurers from 
every corner of the known world, one wonders 
whose sons they were who, for three centuries and 
more, so brilliantly led the van of modern Euro- 
pean culture, as it emerged from the darkness of 



DECADENCE 25 

the early Middle Ages. Passing by such collateral 
issues, however, and admitting depopulation to 
have been both real and serious, we may well ask 
whether it was not the result of Roman decadence 
rather than its cause — the symptom of some deep- 
seated social malady, not its origin. We are not 
concerned here with the aristocracy of Rome, nor 
even with the people of Italy. We are concerned 
with the Empire. We are not concerned with a 
passing phase or fashion, but with a process which 
seems to have gone on with increasing rapidity, 
through good times as well as bad, till the final 
cataclysm. A local disease might have a local ex- 
planation, a transient disease might be due to a 
chance coincidence. But what can we say of a 
disease which was apparently co-extensive with 
Imperial civilisation in area, and which exceeded it 
in duration? 

I find it hard to believe that either a selfish 
aversion to matrimony or a mystical admiration 
for celibacy, though at certain periods the one was 
common in Pagan and the other in Christian 
circles, were more than elements in the complex of 
causes by which the result was brought about. 
Like the plagues which devastated Europe in the 
second and third centuries, they must have greatly 
aggravated the evil, but they are hardly sufficient 
to account for it. Nor yet can we find an explana- 



26 DECADENCE 

tion of it in the sense of impending doom, by which 
men's spirits were oppressed long before the 
Imperial power began visibly to wane; for this is 
one of the things which, if historically true, does 
itself most urgently require explanation. 

It may be, however, that our wandering poli- 
tician would be too well grounded in Malthusian 
economics to regard a diminution of population as 
in itself an overwhelming calamity. And if he 
were pressed to describe the weak spots in the 
Empire of the Antonines he would be disposed, I 
think, to look for them on the ethical rather than 
on the military, the economic, or the strictly 
political sides of social life. He would be inclined 
to say, as in effect Mr. Lecky does say, that in the 
institution of slavery, in the brutalities of the 
gladiatorial shows, in the gratuitous distribution of 
bread to urban mobs, are to be found the corrupt- 
ing influences which first weakened and then 
destroyed the vigour of the State. 

I confess that I cannot easily accept this 
analysis of the facts. As regards the gladiatorial 
shows, even had they been universal throughout 
the Empire, and had they flourished more rankly 
as its power declined, I should still have questioned 
the propriety of attributing too far-reaching 
effects to such a cause. The Romans were brutal 
while they were conquering the world : its conquest 



DECADENCE 27 

enabled them to be brutal with ostentation; but we 
must not measure the ill consequences of their bar- 
baric tastes by the depth of our own disgusts, nor 
assume the Gothic invasions to be the natural and 
fitting Nemesis of so much spectacular shedding of 
innocent blood. 

As for the public distributions of corn, one, 
would wish to have more evidence as to its social 
effects. But even without fully accepting the 
theory of the latest Italian historian of ancient 
Rome who believes that, under the then prevailing 
conditions of transport, no very large city could 
exist in antiquity if the supply of its food were left 
to private enterprise, we cannot seriously regard 
this practice, strange as it seems to us, as an im- 
portant element in the problem. Granting for the 
sake of argument that it demoralised the mob of 
Rome, it must be remembered that Rome was not 
the Empire, nor did the mob of Rome govern the 
Empire as once it had governed the Republic. 

Slavery is a far more important matter. The 
magnitude of its effects on ancient societies, diffi- 
cult as these are to disentangle, can hardly be 
exaggerated. But with what plausibility can we 
find in it the cause of Rome's decline, seeing that 
it was the concomitant also of its rise? How can 
that which in antiquity was common to all states 
have this exceptional and malign influence upon 



28 DECADENCE 

one? It would not in any case be easy to accept 
such a theory; but surely it becomes impossible 
when we bear in mind the enormous improvement 
effected under the Empire both in the law and the 
practice of slavery. Great as were its evils, they 
were diminishing evils — less ruinous as time went 
on to the character of the master, less painful and 
degrading to the slave. Who can believe that this 
immemorial custom could, in its decline, destroy a 
civilisation which, in its vigour, it had helped to 
create ? 

Of course our observer would see much in the 
social system he was examining which he would 
rightly regard as morally detestable and politically 
pernicious. But the real question before him 
would not be "are these things good or bad?" but 
"are these things getting better or getting worse?" 
And surely in most cases he would be obliged to 
answer "getting better." Many things moreover 
would come under his notice fitted to move his 
admiration in a much less qualified manner. Few 
governments have been more anxious to foster an 
alien and higher culture than was the Roman Gov- 
ernment to foster Greek civilisation. In so far as 
Rome inherited what Alexander conquered, it 
carried out the ideal which Alexander had con- 
ceived. In few periods have the rich been readier 
to spend of their private fortunes on public ob- 



DECADENCE 29 

jects. There never was a community in which 
associations for every purpose of mutual aid or 
enjoyment sprang more readily into existence. 
There never was a military monarchy less given 
to wars of aggression. There never was an age in 
which there was a more rapid advance in humani- 
tarian ideals, or a more anxious seeking after 
spiritual truth. Education was well endowed, and 
its professors held in high esteem. Physical cul- 
ture was cared for. Law was becoming scientific. 
Research was not forgotten. What more could be 
reasonably expected? 

According to our ordinary methods of analysis 
it is not easy to say what more could be reasonably 
expected. But plainly much more was required. 
In a few generations from the time of which I am 
speaking the Empire lost its extraordinary power 
of assimilating alien and barbaric elements. It 
became too feeble either to absorb or to expel 
them; and the immigrants who in happier times 
might have bestowed renewed vigour on the com- 
monwealth, became, in the hour of its decline, a 
weakness and a peril. Poverty grew as popula- 
tion shrank. Municipal office, once so eagerly 
desired, became the most cruel of burdens. Asso- 
ciations connected with industry or commerce, 
which began by freely exchanging public service 
for public privilege, found their members sub- 



30 DECADENCE 

jected to ever increasing obligations, for the due 
performance of which they and their children were 
liable in person and in property. Thus while 
Christianity, and the other forces that made for 
mercy, were diminishing the slavery of the slave, 
the needs of the Bureaucracy compelled it to 
trench ever more and more upon the freedom of the 
free. It was each man's duty (so ran the argu- 
ment) to serve the commonwealth: he could best 
serve the commonwealth by devoting himself to his 
calling if it were one of public necessity : this duty 
he should be required under penalties to perform, 
and to devote if necessary to its performance 
labour to the limits of endurance, fortune to the 
last shilling, and family to the remotest genera- 
tion. Through this crude experiment in socialism, 
the civilised world seemed to be rapidly moving 
towards a system of universal caste, imposed 
by no immemorial custom, supported by no re- 
ligious scruple, but forced on an unwilling peo- 
ple by the Emperor's edict and the executioner's 
lash. 

These things have severally and collectively 
been regarded as the causes why in the West the 
Imperial system so quickly crumbled into chaos. 
And so no doubt they were. But they obviously 
require themselves to be explained by causes more 
general and more remote; and what were these? 



DECADENCE 31 

If I answer as I feel disposed to answer — 
Decadence — you will properly ask how the un- 
known becomes less unknown merely by receiving 
a name. I reply that if there be indeed subtle 
changes in the social tissues of old communities 
which make them, as time goes on, less resistant to 
the external attacks and the internal disturbances 
by which all communities are threatened, overt 
recognition of the fact is a step in advance. We 
have not an idea of what "life" consists in, but if 
on that account we were to abstain from using the 
term, we should not be better but worse equipped 
for dealing with the problems of physiology; while 
on the other hand, if we could translate life into 
terms of matter and motion to-morrow, we should 
still be obliged to use the word in order to dis- 
tinguish the material movements which constitute 
life from those which do not. In like manner we 
are ignorant of the inner character of the cell 
changes which produce senescence. But should 
we be better fitted to form a correct concep- 
tion of the life-history of complex organisms if 
we refused to recognise any cause of death but 
accident or disease? I admit, of course, that the 
term "decadence" is less precise than "old age," 
as sociology deals with organisms far less definite 
than biology. I admit also that it explains noth- 



32 DECADENCE 

ing. If its use is to be justified at all, the justifica- 
tion must depend not on the fact that it supplies 
an explanation, but on the fact that it rules out 
explanations which are obvious but inadequate. 
And this may be a service of some importance. 
The facile generalisations with which we so often 
season the study of dry historic fact; the habits of 
political discussion which induce us to catalogue 
for purposes of debate the outward signs that dis- 
tinguish (as we are prone to think) the standing 
from the falling state, hide the obscurer, but more 
potent, forces which silently prepare the fate of 
empires. National character is subtle and elusive; 
not to be expressed in statistics nor measured by 
the rough methods which suffice the practical mor- 
alist or statesman. And when through an ancient 
and still powerful state there spreads a mood of 
deep discouragement, when the reaction against 
recurring ills grows feebler, and the ship rises less 
buoyantly to each succeeding wave, when learning 
languishes, enterprise slackens, and vigour ebbs 
away, then, as I think, there is present some 
process of social degeneration which we must per- 
force recognise, and which, pending a satisfactory 
analysis, may conveniently be distinguished by the 
name of "decadence." 

I am well aware that though the space I have 
just devoted to the illustration of my theme pro- 



DECADENCE 33 

vided by Roman history is out of all proportion 
to the general plan of this address, yet the treat- 
ment of it is inadequate and perhaps unconvincing. 
But those who are most reluctant to admit that 
decay, as distinguished from misfortune, may 
lower the general level of civilisation, can hardly 
deny that in many cases that level may for indefi- 
nite periods show no tendency to rise. If de- 
cadence be unknown, is not progress exceptional? 
Consider the changing politics of the unchanging 
East. 1 Is it not true that there, while wars and 
revolutions, dynastic and religious, have shattered 
ancient states and brought new ones into being, 
every community, as soon as it has risen above the 
tribal and nomad condition, adopts with the rarest 
exceptions a form of government which, from its 
very generality in Eastern lands, we habitually 
call an "oriental despotism"? We may crystallise 
and re-crystallise a soluble salt as often as we 
please, the new crystals will always resemble the 
old ones. The crystals, indeed, may be of different 
sizes, their component molecules may occupy 
different positions within the crystalline structure, 
but the structure itself will be of one immutable 

1 The "East" is a term most loosely us«d. It does not 
here include China and Japan and does include part of Africa. 
The observations which follow have no reference either to the 
Jews or to the commercial aristocracies of Phoenician origin. 



34 DECADENCE 

pattern. So it is, or seems to be, with these 
oriental states. They rise, in turn, upon the ruins 
of their predecessors, themselves predestined to 
perish by a like fate. But whatever their origin or 
history, they are always either autocracies or 
aggregations of autocracies; and no differences of 
race, of creed, or of language seem sufficient to 
vary the violent monotony of their internal history. 
In the eighteenth century theorists were content to 
attribute the political servitude of the Eastern 
world to the unscrupulous machinations of tyrants 
and their tools. And such explanations are good 
as far as they go. But this, in truth, is not very 
far. Intrigue, assassination, ruthless repression, 
the whole machinery of despotism supply particu- 
lar explanations of particular incidents. They do 
not supply the general explanation of the general 
phenomenon. They tell you how this ruler or that 
obtained absolute power. They do not tell you 
why every ruler is absolute. Nor can I furnish the 
answer. The fact remains that over large and rela- 
tively civilised portions of the world popular 
government is profoundly unpopular, in the sense 
that it is no natural or spontaneous social growth. 
Political absolutism, not political freedom, is the 
f amilar weed of the country. Despots change but 
despotism remains ; and if through alien influences, 
like those exercised by Greek cities in Asia, or by 



DECADENCE 85 

British rule in India, the type is modified, it may 
well be doubted whether the modification could 
long survive the moment when its sustaining cause 
was withdrawn. 

Now it would almost seem as if in lands where 
this political type was normal a certain level of 
culture (not of course the same in each case) could 
not permanently be overpassed. If under the ex- 
citement of religion or conquest, or else through 
causes more complicated and more obscure, this 
limit has sometimes been left behind, reaction has 
always followed, and decadence set in. Many per- 
sons indeed, as I have already observed, take this 
as a matter of course. It seems to them the most 
natural thing in the world that the glories of the 
Eastern Khalifate should decay, and that the 
Moors in Morocco should lose even the memory of 
the learning and the arts possessed but three cen- 
turies ago by the Moors in Spain. To me it seems 
mysterious. But whether it be easy of compre- 
hension or difficult, does it not furnish food for 
disquieting reflection? If there are whole groups 
of nations capable on their own initiative of a 
certain measure of civilisation, but capable ap- 
parently of no more, and if below them again there 
are (as I suppose) other races who seem incapable 
of either creating a civilisation of their own, or of 
preserving unaided a civilisation impressed upon 



36 DECADENCE 

them from without, by what right do we assume 
that no impossible limits bar the path of Western 
progress? Those limits may not yet be in sight. 
Surely they are not. But does not a survey of 
history suggest that somewhere in the dim future 
they await our approach? 

It may be replied that the history of Rome on 
which I dwelt a moment ago, shows that arrested 
progress, and even decadence, may be but the pre- 
lude to a new period of vigorous growth. So that 
even those races or nations which seem frozen into 
eternal immobility may base upon experience their 
hopes of an awakening spring. 

I am not sure, however, that this is the true 
interpretation of the facts. There is no spectacle 
indeed in all history more impressive than the thick 
darkness settling down over Western Europe, 
blotting out all but a faint and distorted vision of 
Grseco-Roman culture, and then, as it slowly rises, 
unveiling the variety and rich promise of the mod- 
ern world. But I do not think we should make 
this unique phenomenon support too weighty a 
load of theory. I should not infer from it that 
when some wave of civilisation has apparently 
spent its force, we have a right to regard its with- 
drawing sweep as but the prelude to a new advance. 
I should rather conjecture that in this particular 
case we should find, among other subtle causes of 



DECADENCE 37 

decadence, some obscure disharmony between the 
Imperial system and the temperament of the 
West, undetected even by those who suffered from 
it. That system, though accepted with content- 
ment and even with pride, though in the days of 
its greatness it brought civilisation, commerce, and 
security in its train, must surely have lacked some 
elements which are needed to foster among Teu- 
tons, Celts, and Iberians the qualities, whatever 
these may be, on which sustained progress depends. 
It was perhaps too oriental for the Occident, and 
it certainly became more oriental as time went on. 
In the East it was, comparatively speaking, suc- 
cessful. If there was no progress, decadence was 
slow; and but for what Western Europe did, and 
what it failed to do, during the long struggle with 
militant Mahomedanism, there might still be an 
Empire in the East, largely Asiatic in population, 
Christian in religion, Greek in culture, Roman by 
political descent. 

Had this been the course of events large por- 
tions of mankind would doubtless have been much 
better governed than they are. It is not so clear 
that they would have been more "progressive. 1 ' 
Progress is with the West — with communities of 
the European type. And if their energy of de- 
velopment is some day to be exhausted, who can 
believe that there remains any external source 



38 DECADENCE 

from which it can be renewed? Where are the 
untried races competent to construct out of the 
ruined fragments of our civilisation a new and 
better habitation for the spirit of man? They do 
not exist; and if the world is again to be buried 
under a barbaric flood, it will not be like that which 
fertilised, though it first destroyed, the western 
provinces of Rome, but like that which in Asia 
submerged for ever the last traces of Hellenic 
culture. 

We are thus brought back to the question I put 
a few moments since: What grounds are there for 
supposing that we can escape the fate to which 
other races have had to submit? If for periods 
which, measured on the historic scale, are of great 
duration, communities which have advanced to a 
certain point appear able to advance no further; 
if civilisations wear out, and races become effete, 
why should we expect to progress indefinitely, why 
for us alone is the doom of man to be reversed? 

To these questions I have no very satisfactory 
answers to give, nor do I believe that our knowl- 
edge of national or social psychology is sufficient 
to make a satisfactory answer possible. Some 
purely tentative observations on the point may, 
however, furnish a fitting conclusion to an address 
which has been tentative throughout, and aims 



DECADENCE 39 

rather at suggesting trains of thought, than at 
completing them. 

I assume that the factors which combine to make 
each generation what it is at the moment of its 
entrance into adult life are in the main two-fold. 
The one produces the raw material of society, the 
process of manufacture is effected by the other. 
The first is physiological or rather psycho-physical 
inheritance, the second is the inheritance partly of 
external conditions of life, partly of beliefs, 1 tra- 
ditions, sentiments, customs, laws, and organisa- 
tion — all that constitute the social surroundings in 
which men grow up to maturity. 

I hazard no conjecture as to the share borne 
respectively by these two kinds of cause in pro- 
ducing their joint result. Nor are we likely to 
obtain satisfactory evidence on the subject till, in 
the interests of science, two communities of differ- 
ent blood and different traditions consent to 
exchange their children at birth by a universal 
process of reciprocal adoption. But even in the 
absence of so heroic an experiment, it seems safe 
to say that the mobility which makes possible 
either progress or decadence, resides rather in the 
causes grouped under the second head than in the 
psycho-physical material on which education, in the 
widest sense of that ambiguous term, has got to 

1 Beliefs include knowledge. 



40 DECADENCE 

work. If, as I suppose, acquired qualities are not 
inherited, the only causes which could fundamen- 
tally modify the psycho-physical character of any 
particular community are its intermixture with 
alien races through slavery, conquest, or immigra- 
tion; or else new conditions which varied the rela- 
tive proportions in which different sections of the 
populations contributed to its total numbers. If, 
for example, the more successful members of the 
community had smaller families than the less suc- 
cessful; or if medical administration succeeded in 
extinguishing maladies to which persons of a par- 
ticular constitution were specially liable; or if one 
strain in a mixed race had a larger birth-rate than 
another — in these cases and in others like them, 
there would doubtless be a change in the inherited 
factor of national character. But such changes are 
not likely, I suppose, to be considerable, except, 
perhaps, when they are due to the mixture of races 
— and that only in new countries whose economic 
opportunities tempt immigrants widely differing in 
capacity for culture from those whose citizenship 
they propose to share. 

The flexible element in any society, that which 
is susceptible of progress or decadence, must 
therefore be looked for rather in the physical and 
psychical conditions affecting the life of its com- 
ponent units, than in their inherited constitution. 



DECADENCE 41 

This last rather supplies a limit to variations than 
an element which does itself vary, though from this 
point of view its importance is capital. I at least 
find it quite impossible to believe that any attempt 
to provide widely different races with an identi- 
cal environment — political, religious, educational, 
what you will — can ever make them alike. They 
have been different since history began; different 
they are destined to remain through future periods 
of comparable duration. 

But though the advance of each community is 
thus limited by its inherited aptitudes, I do not 
suppose that those limits have ever been reached 
by its unaided efforts. In the cases where a for- 
ward movement has died away, the pause must in 
part be due to arrested development in the vari- 
able, not to a fixed resistance in the unchanging 
factor of national character. Either external con- 
ditions are unfavourable; or the sentiments, cus- 
toms and beliefs which make society possible have 
hardened into shapes which make its further self- 
development impossible; or through mere 
weariness of spirit the community resigns itself to 
a contented, or perhaps a discontented, stagnation; 
or it shatters itself in pursuit of impossible ideals, 
or, for other and obscurer reasons, flags in its en- 
deavours and falls short of possible achievement. 



42 DECADENCE 

Now I am quite unable to offer any such 
general analysis of the causes by which these hin- 
drances to progress are produced or removed as 
would furnish a reply to my question. But it may 
be worth noting that a social force has come into 
being, new in magnitude if not in kind, which must 
favourably modify such hindrances as come under 
all but the last of the divisions in which I have 
roughly arranged them. This force is the modern 
alliance between pure science and industry. That 
on this we must mainly rely for the improvement 
of the material conditions under which societies live 
is in my opinion obvious, although no one would 
conjecture it from a historic survey of political 
controversy. Its direct moral effects are less 
obvious; indeed there are many most excellent 
people who would altogether deny their existence. 
To regard it as a force, fitted to rouse and sustain 
the energies of nations would seem to them absurd ; 
for this would be to rank it with those other forces 
which have most deeply stirred the emotions of 
great communities, have urged them to the great- 
est exertions, have released them most effectually 
from the benumbing fetters of merely personal 
preoccupations — it would be to rank it with re- 
ligion, patriotism, and politics. Industrial expan- 
sion under scientific inspiration, so far from deserv- 
ing praise like this, is, in their view, at best but a 



DECADENCE 43 

new source of material well-being, at worst the 
prolific parent of physical ugliness in many forms, 
machine-made wares, smoky cities, polluted rivers 
and desecrated landscapes — appropriately asso- 
ciated with materialism and greed. 

I believe this view to be utterly misleading, con- 
founding accident with essence, transient accom- 
paniments with inseparable characteristics. Should 
we dream of thus judging the other great social 
forces of which I have spoken? Are we to ignore 
what religion has done for the world because it 
has been the fruitful excuse for the narrowest 
bigotries and the most cruel persecutions ? Are we 
to underrate the worth of politics because politics 
may mean no more than the mindless clash of fac- 
tions, or the barren exchange of one set of tyrants 
or jobbers for another? Is patriotism to be 
despised because its manifestations have been 
sometimes vulgar, sometimes selfish, sometimes 
brutal, sometimes criminal? Estimates like these 
seem to me worse than useless. All great social 
forces are not merely capable of perversion: they 
are constantly perverted. Yet were they elimi- 
nated from our social system, were each man (act- 
ing on the advice which Voltaire gave but never 
followed) to disinterest himself in everything 
beyond the limits of his own cabbage garden, 



44 DECADENCE 

decadence, I take it, would have already far ad- 
vanced. 

But if the proposition I am defending may be 
wrongly criticised, it is still more likely to be 
wrongly praised. To some it will commend itself 
as a eulogy on an industrial as distinguished from 
a military civilisation; as a suggestion that in the 
peaceful pursuit of wealth is to be found a val- 
uable social tonic. This may possibly be true, 
but it is not my contention. In talking of the 
alliance between industry and science my emphasis 
is at least as much on the word science as on the 
word industry. I am not concerned now with the 
proportion of the population devoted to productive 
labour, or the esteem in which they are held. It 
is on the effects which I believe are following, 
and are going in yet larger measure to follow, 
from the intimate relation between scientific dis- 
covery and industrial efficiency, that I most desire 
to insist. 

Do you then, it will be asked, so highly rate the 
utilitarian aspect of research as to regard it as a 
source, not merely of material convenience, but of 
spiritual elevation? Is it seriously to be ranked 
with religion and patriotism as an important instru- 
ment for raising men's lives above what is small, 
personal, and self-centred ? Does it not rather per- 
vert pure knowledge into a new contrivance for 



DECADENCE 45 

making money, and give little needed encourage- 
ment to the "growing materialism of the age"? 

I do not myself believe that this age is either 
less spiritual or more sordid than its predecessors. 
I believe, indeed, precisely the reverse. But how- 
ever this may be, is it not plain that if a society is 
to be moved by the remote speculations of isolated 
thinkers it can only be on condition that their 
isolation is not complete? Some point of contact 
they must have with the world in which they live; 
and if their influence is to be based on widespread 
sympathy, the contact must be in a region where 
there can be, if not full mutual comprehension, at 
least a large measure of practical agreement 
and willing co-operation. Philosophy has never 
touched the mass of men except through religion. 
And, though the parallel is not complete, it is safe 
to say that science will never touch them unaided 
by its practical applications. Its wonders may be 
catalogued for purposes of education, they may 
be illustrated by arresting experiments, by num- 
bers and magnitudes which startle or fatigue the 
imagination; but they will form no familiar por- 
tion of the intellectual furniture of ordinary men 
unless they be connected, however remotely, with 
the conduct of ordinary life. Critics have made 
merry over the naive self-importance which rep- 
resented the human race as the centre and final 



46 DECADENCE 

cause of the universe, and conceived the stupendous 
mechanism of Nature as primarily designed to sat- 
isfy its wants and minister to its entertainment. 
But there is another, and an opposite, danger into 
which it is possible to fall. The material world, 
howsoever it may have gained in sublimity, has, 
under the touch of science, lost (so to speak) in 
domestic charm. Its profounder secrets seem so 
remote from the concerns of men that in the 
majority they rouse no serious interest; while of 
the minority who are fascinated by its marvels, not 
a few will be chilled by its impersonal and indiffer- 
ent immensity. 

For this latter mood only religion or religious 
philosophy can supply a cure. But for the former, 
the appropriate remedy is the perpetual stimulus 
which the influence of science on the business of 
mankind offers to their sluggish curiosity. And 
even now I believe this influence to be underrated. 
If in the last hundred years the whole material 
setting of civilised life has altered, we owe it 
neither to politicians nor to political institutions. 
We owe it to the combined efforts of those who 
have advanced science and those who have applied 
it. If our outlook upon the Universe has suffered 
modifications in detail so great and so numerous 
that they amount collectively to a revolution, it is 
to men of science we owe it, not to theologians or 



DECADENCE 47 

philosophers. On these, indeed, new and weighty 
responsibilities are being cast. They have to har- 
monise and to co-ordinate, to prevent the new from 
being narrow, to preserve unharmed the valuable 
essence of what is old. But science is the great 
instrument of social change, all the greater because 
its object is not change but knowledge; and its 
silent appropriation of this dominant function, 
amid the din of political and religious strife, is the 
most vital of all the revolutions which have marked 
the development of modern civilisation. 

It may seem fanciful to find in a single recent 
aspect of this revolution an influence which re- 
sembles religion or patriotism in its appeals to 
the higher side of ordinary characters — especially 
since we are accustomed to regard the appropria- 
tion by industry of scientific discoveries merely as 
a means of multiplying the material conveniences 
of life. But if it be remembered that this process 
brings vast sections of every industrial community 
into admiring relation with the highest intellectual 
achievement and the most disinterested search for 
truth ; that those who live by directly ministering to 
the common wants of average humanity lean for 
support on those who search among the deepest 
mysteries of Nature; that this dependence is re- 
warded by growing success; that success gives in 
its turn an incentive to individual effort in no wise 



48 DECADENCE 

to be measured by personal expectation of gain; 
that the energies thus aroused may affect the whole 
character of the community, spreading the be- 
neficent contagion of hope and high endeavour 
through channels scarcely known, to workers * in 
fields the most remote ; if all this be borne in mind 
the relation of science and industry may perhaps 
seem not unworthy of the place among moral anti- 
septics which I have tentatively assigned to it. 

But I do not offer this speculation, whatever be 
its worth, as an answer to my original question. 
It is but an aid to optimism, not a reply to pes- 
simism. Such a reply can only be given by a 
sociology which has arrived at trustworthy conclu- 
sions on the life-history of different types of society, 
and has risen above the empirical and merely in- 
terrogative point of view which, for want of a 
better, I have adopted in this address. No such 
sociology exists at present, or seems likely soon 
to be created. In its absence the conclusions at 
which I provisionally arrive are that we cannot 
regard decadence and arrested development as less 
normal in human communities than progress: 
that the internal causes by which, in any given 
community, progress is encouraged, hindered, or 
reversed, lie to a great extent beyond the field of 
ordinary political vision, and are not easily ex- 

1 See note at the end of the paper. 



DECADENCE 49 

pressed in current political terminology; that the 
influence which a superior civilisation, acting from 
without, may have in advancing an inferior one, 
though often beneficent, is not likely to be perma- 
nent or (so to speak) self-supporting, unless the 
character of the civilisation be in harmony both 
with the acquired temperament and with the innate 
capacities of those who have been induced to accept 
it ; that as regards those nations which still advance 
in virtue of their own inherent energies, though 
time has brought perhaps new causes of disquiet, 
it has brought also new grounds of hope ; and that 
whatever be the perils in front of us, there are, so 
far, no symptoms either of pause or of regression 
in the onward movement which for more than a 
thousand years has been characteristic of Western 
civilisation. 

Note to Page 48 

This remark arises out of a train of thought suggested 
by two questions which are very pertinent to the subject 
of the Address. 

(1) Is a due succession of men above the average in 
original capacity necessary to maintain social progress? 
and 

(2) If so, can we discover any law according to which 
such men are produced? 

I entertain no doubt myself that the answer to the first 
question should be in the affirmative. Democracy is an 
excellent thing; but, though quite consistent with prog- 



50 DECADENCE 

ress, it is not progressive per se. Its value is regulative 
not dynamic; and if it meant (as it never does) substan- 
tial uniformity instead of legal equality, we should be- 
come fossilised at once. Movement may be controlled or 
checked by the many ; it is initiated and made effective by 
the few. If (for the sake of illustration) we suppose 
mental capacity in all its many forms to be mensur- 
able and commensurable, and then imagine two societies 
possessing the same average capacity — but an average 
made up in one case of equal units, in the other of a 
majority slightly below the average and a minority much 
above it — few could doubt that the second, not the first, 
would show the greatest aptitude for movement. It might 
go wrong, but it would go. 

The second question — how is this originality (in its 
higher manifestations called genius) effectively produced? 
— is not so simple. 

Excluding education in its narrowest sense — which few 
would regard as having much to do with the matter — the 
only alternatives seem to be the following: 

Original capacity may be no more than one of the ordi- 
nary variations incidental to heredity. A community 
may breed a minority thus exceptionally gifted, as it 
breeds a minority of men over six feet six. There may be 
an average decennial output of congenital geniuses as 
there is an average decennial output of congenital idiots 
— though the number is likely to be smaller. 

But if this be the sole cause of the phenomenon, why 
does the same race apparently produce many men of 
genius in one generation and few in another? Why are 
years of abundance so often followed by long periods of 
sterility? 



DECADENCE 51 

The most obvious explanation of this would seem to be 
that in some periods circumstances give many openings 
to genius, in some periods few. The genius is constantly 
produced; but it is only occasionally recognised. 

In this there must be some truth. A mob orator in 
Turkey, a religious reformer in seventeenth-century 
Spain, a military genius in the Sandwich islands, would 
hardly get their chance. Yet the theory of opportunity 
can scarcely be reckoned a complete explanation, for it 
leaves unaccounted for the variety of ability which has 
in some countries marked epochs of vigorous national 
development. Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries, 
Florence in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and early 
sixteenth centuries, Holland in the later sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, are typical examples. In such 
periods the opportunities of statesmen, soldiers, orators, 
and diplomatists, may have been specially frequent. But 
whence came the poets, the sculptors, the painters, the 
philosophers and the men of letters? What peculiar 
opportunities had they? 

The only explanation, if we reject the idea of a mere 
coincidence, seems to be that, quite apart from oppor- 
tunity, the exceptional stir and fervour of national life 
evokes or may evoke qualities which in ordinary times lie 
dormant, unknown even to their possessors. The po- 
tential Miltons are "mute" and "inglorious," not because 
they cannot find a publisher, but because they have noth- 
ing they want to publish. They lack the kind of inspira- 
tion which, on this view, flows from social surroundings 
where great things, though of quite another kind, are 
being done and thought. 

If this theory be true (and it is not without its diffi- 



52 DECADENCE 

culties), one would like to know whether these undoubted 
outbursts of originality in the higher and rarer form of 
genius are symptomatic of a general rise in the number 
of persons exhibiting original capacity of a more ordi- 
nary type. If so, then the conclusion would seem to be 
that some kind of widespread exhilaration or excitement 
is required in order to enable any community to extract 
the best results from the raw material transmitted to it 
by natural inheritance. 

Note II (1920) 

Long subsequent to the writing of this Lecture I was 
given, through the courtesy of Professor Simkhovitch of 
Columbia University, an opportunity of reading some re- 
sults of his investigations into the gradual degradation 
in the productiveness of Mediterranean lands during the 
later Roman Republic and the Empire. I am not qualified 
to form any independent judgment on the value of his 
conclusions. But his argument has deeply impressed me ; 
and I am convinced that historians should give more at- 
tention than they have commonly cared to bestow upon 
the social and political effects of soil deterioration in 
ancient and mediaeval times. It may well be that this 
purely physical cause had a greater share than we have 
been accustomed to suppose in producing what I have 
always deemed the most mysterious movement in history 
— the slow "decline and fall" of the Roman Empire. 

Note III (1920) 

The reader of this lecture may perhaps think that 
I am oblivious of all the ambiguities and obscurities 



DECADENCE 53 

which beset such words as ^Progress" and "Decad- 
ence." This is not so. It must however suffice, in the 
present state of our knowledge, that the terms convey, 
though loosely, more or less intelligible conceptions. Dis- 
cussion may gradually make them more precise: I have 
taken them as I found them. 



PART ONE: SPECULATIVE 

II: BEAUTY— AND THE CRITICISM 
OF BEAUTY 



II 



BEAUTY: AND THE CRITICISM OF 
BEAUTY » 



The theme of this paper is beauty and the criti- 
cism of beauty; aesthetic excellence and its analy- 
sis. From prehistoric times men have occupied 
themselves in producing works of art: since the 
time of Aristotle they have spent learned energy 
in commenting on them. How much are we the 
wiser? What real insight do the commentaries 
give us into the qualities which produce aesthetic 
pleasure, or into the marks which distinguish good 
art from bad? 

Any man desirous of obtaining answers to ques- 
tions like these would naturally turn in the first 
place to the history of criticism, and if he did so 
he would certainly be well rewarded. It may be 
doubted, however, whether the reward would con- 
sist in the satisfaction of his curiosity. For in pro- 
portion as criticism has endeavoured to establish 

1 Romanes Lecture, Oxford University, November 24, 1909. 

57 



58 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

principles of composition, to lay down laws of 
Beauty, to fix criterions of excellence, so it seems 
to me to have failed; its triumphs, and they are 
great, have been won on a different field. The 
critics who have dealt most successfully with 
theory have dealt with it destructively. They have 
demolished the dogmas of their predecessors, but 
have advanced few dogmas of their own. So that, 
after some twenty-three centuries of aesthetic 
speculation, we are still without any accepted body 
of aesthetic doctrine. 

Perhaps the most perverse of all forms of 
critical theory is that which flourished so luxuri- 
antly immediately after the revival of learning. 
It professed to base itself on experience. Accept- 
ing the classical masterpieces as supreme models 
of excellence, it asked how they were made. To 
examine minutely the procedure of the great 
classical writers, to embody their example in rules, 
to standardise their practice, seemed the obvious 
method of enabling the moderns to acquire some 
tincture of the literary merits so ardently admired 
in the ancients : and the method was applied with a 
simple-minded consistency which to the reader of 
the twentieth century seems both pathetic and 
ludicrous. "If you would rival antiquity," said the 
critics, "imitate it. If you would imitate it, note 
well its methods. When these have been thor- 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 59 

oughly mastered, it should be as easy to frame 
recipes for writing an epic, as for compounding a 
p]um-pudding" — and they framed them accord- 
ingly. 1 

It soon became evident, of course, that such a 
procedure was futile. The idea that the essential 
excellence of great literature could be extracted by 
this process of learned analysis was too crude to 
last. Yet rules of composition, supposed to be of 
classical authority, did not therefore at once fall 
into disrepute. A writer might, to be sure, ignore 
them; but he did so at his peril. If he failed, his 
failure was unredeemed. He could not even claim 
to be "correct." If his talents compelled success, 
he was classed as an "irregular genius, ,, to be reluc- 
tantly allowed a licence forbidden to ordinary 
mankind. 

In the criticism of Music and Painting similar 
tendencies have shown themselves from time to 
time ; and if antiquity had left us masterpieces in 
these arts, and if Aristotle had effectively com- 
mented on them, the failure of post-renaissance 
criticism might have been as prominent in these 
departments of aesthetics as it has been in litera- 
ture. As it is, the failure is the same in kind. The 
study of ancient sculpture gave rise in the 

1 All the subject is admirably discussed in Professor Saints- 
bury 's great History of Criticism. 



60 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

eighteenth century to some very famous generali- 
sations. But they were based on an imperfect 
knowledge of Greek art, and (I imagine) have 
long lost the authority they once possessed. The 
criticism of music and painting shows the same 
weaknesses as the criticism of literature. Theory 
has lagged behind practice; and the procedure of 
the dead has too often been embodied in rules 
which serve no other purpose than to embarrass 
the living. 

Criticism, however, of this kind has had its day. 
It is no longer in demand. The attempt to limit 
aesthetic expression by rules is seen to be futile. 
The attempt to find formulas for the creation of 
new works of beauty by taking old works of 
beauty to pieces and noting how they were made, 
is seen to be more futile still. But if these kinds 
of criticism are obsolete, what is the criticism which 
now occupies their place? 

It is abundant and, I think, admirable. The 
modern commentator is concerned rather to point 
out beauties than to theorise about them. He does 
not measure merit by rule, nor crowd his pages 
with judgments based on precedent. His pro- 
cedure is very different. He takes his reader as 
if it were by the hand, wanders with him through 
some chosen field of literature or art, guides him 
to its fairest scenes, dwells on what he deems to 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 61 

be its beauties, indicates its defects, and invites 
him to share his pleasures. His commentary on 
art is often itself a work of art; he deals with lit- 
erature in what is in itself literature. And he so 
uses the apparatus of learned research that the 
least sympathetic reader, though he need not 
admire, can scarcely fail to understand the author 
criticised, the ends he aimed at, the models that 
swayed him, the conventions within which he 
worked, the nature of the successes which it was 
his fortune to achieve. 

Of criticism like this we cannot have too much. 
Yet it has its difficulties; or rather it suggests 
difficulties which it scarcely attempts to solve. 
For its aesthetic judgments are, in spite of appear- 
ances, for the most part immediate and, so to 
speak, intuitive. "Lo, here!" "Lo, there!" 
"This is good!" "That is less good!" "What 
subtle charm in this stanza!" "What masterly 
orchestration in that symphony!" "What admi- 
rable realism!" "What delicate fancy!" The 
critic tells you what he likes or dislikes; he may 
even seem to tell you why; but the "why" is rarely 
more than a statement of personal preferences. 
For these preferences he may quote authority. He 
may classify them. He may frame general propo- 
sitions about them which have all the air of 
embodying critical principles on which articular 



62 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

aesthetic judgments may securely rest. But, in 
fact, these general propositions only summarise a 
multitude of separate valuations of aesthetic merit, 
each of which is either self-sustaining, or is worth- 
less. 

Many critics, it is true, would be slow to admit 
this. They are not content with historical and 
descriptive accounts of art and artists. They long 
for immutable principles of judgment based on the 
essential nature of beauty. It does not suffice 
them to rejoice over what, in their eyes at least, is 
beautiful; nor yet to make others rejoice with 
them. Unless they can appeal to some critical 
canon, abstract and universal, their personal esti- 
mates of aesthetic value seem of small account. 
Nor is it enough for them that they should be right. 
To complete their satisfaction, those who differ 
from them must be wrong. 

This is perfectly natural. No one willingly 
believes that what he greatly admires is admirable 
only for him. We all instinctively lean to the 
opinion that beauty has "objective" worth, and 
that its expression, whether in nature or in art, 
possesses, as of right, significance for the world at 
large. Yet how is this possible? It is not merely 
that no code of critical legislation seems to be 
forthcoming. The difficulty lies deeper. If we 
had such a code, what authority could it claim? To 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 63 

what objective test can judgment about beauty be 
made amenable? If a picture or a poem stirs my 
admiration, can there be any meaning in the state- 
ments that my taste is bad, and that if I felt rightly 
I should feel differently? If there be a meaning, 
what is it? 

In dealing with this fundamental question we 
must, I think, distinguish. There are kinds of 
aesthetic excellence to which, in a certain sense, we 
can apply an "objective" test; though they are 
neither the highest kinds of excellence nor the most 
important from the point of view of theory. I 
might cite as examples technical skill, workman- 
ship, the mastery over material and instruments, 
and kindred matters. These are more or less 
capable of impersonal measurement; and I cannot 
doubt either that the pleasure they give to the 
sympathetic observer is very great, or that it be- 
longs to the same genus, if not the same species, as 
aesthetic feeling in its more familiar and higher 
meaning. 

Some may think it dishonouring to beauty thus 
to class it with technical skill. Others, forgetful 
that Fine Art is the distant cousin of sport, may 
think it dishonouring to the technical skill required 
of the poet, the painter, or the musician, to com- 
pare it with that required of the cricketer or the 
billiard-player. There is no doubt an all-important 



64 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

difference between them. In the case of games, 
the pleasures which the sympathetic observation of 
great skill produces in a competent spectator are 
unaffected by the result; for, beyond itself, true 
sport has, properly speaking, no result. Victory 
and defeat are subordinate incidents. The final 
cause of games is the playing of them. In art, on 
the other hand, skill is a means to an end; and if 
the end be not attained there is apt to arise a cer- 
tain feeling of dissatisfaction. Dexterous versifi- 
cation which does not result in poetry, admirable 
brush-work expressing a mean design, may in their 
degree give pleasure; but it is pleasure marred by 
the reflection that the purpose for which versifica- 
tion and painting exist has not, in these cases, been 
accomplished. 

However this may be, my contention is that the 
pleasure given by the contemplation of technical 
dexterity is aesthetic, and that technical dexterity 
itself is capable of objective estimation. In games 
of pure skill it is certainly so. He plays best who 
wins. The scorer is an infallible critic; and his 
standard of excellence is as "objective" as any man 
could desire. In other cases, no doubt, the meas- 
ure of technical merit may not be so precise. It 
may be hard, for example, to decide which member 
of a hunt rides best across country, or which com- 
poser shows the greatest mastery of counterpoint 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 65 

and fugue. Yet these also are questions more 
or less capable of "objective" estimation. The 
trained critic, be it in the art of riding or in con- 
trapuntal conventions, may, by the application of 
purely impersonal tests, make a tolerably fair 
comparison. Familiar with the difficulties which 
have to be met, he can judge of the success with 
which they have been surmounted. Basing his 
estimate, not on feeling but on knowledge, he can 
measure aesthetic qualities by a scale which is not 
the less "objective" because it may often be uncer- 
tain in its application. 

Here, then, are aesthetic qualities (I have taken 
artistic workmanship as an example) which have 
a known reality apart from aesthetic feeling, and 
which can be independently measured. Of these it 
is possible, in a certain loose sense, to say that the 
man who admires them is right, and the man who 
does not admire them is wrong: that the one sees 
excellence when it is there, while the other does 
not. But when we pass from qualities like these, 
through doubtful and marginal cases, to the quali- 
ties we call "sublime," "beautiful," "pathetic," 
"humorous," "melodious," and so forth, our posi- 
tion is quite different. What kind of existence are 
they known to possess apart from feeling? How 
are they to be measured except by the emotions 
they produce ? Are they indeed anything but those 



66 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

very emotions illegitimately "objectified," and 
assumed to be permanent attributes of the works 
of art which happen in this case or in that to excite 
them? 

Questions of this kind have, I suppose, 
haunted all those who cannot accept canons of 
criticism based on precedent or authority. And 
many are the devices adopted, or hinted at, by 
which the sceptical individualism, which these 
doubts suggest, may be removed or mitigated. 

Of such devices the most familiar is the assump- 
tion that, however impossible it may be to discover 
in w T hat beauty consists, it is quite unnecessary to 
do so, since there is a common agreement as to the 
things which are in fact beautiful. Though the 
naturalist may not be able to define life, yet the 
world is not embarrassed to distinguish the living 
from the dead. Though there are many colour- 
blind people among us, yet the world judges with 
practical security that the flowers of a geranium 
are red and its leaves green. In like manner (it is 
thought) the world recognises beauty when it sees 
it, unmoved either by the dissent of negligible 
minorities, or by the imperfections of aesthetic 
theory. 

These analogies, however, are misleading. Bi- 
ologists may be perplexed about the mystery of 
life, but they can always tell you why they regard 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 67 

this body as living and that one as dead. Their 
canons of judgment have "objective'' value, and 
are as applicable to new cases as to old. The 
aesthetic critics of whom I am speaking make no 
such claim. They do not pretend to catalogue the 
external attributes by which the objective pres- 
ence of the higher kinds of beauty can be securely 
established, which are never present when it is 
absent, or absent when it is present. They are 
always reduced in the last resort to ask, "Does this 
work of art convey aesthetic pleasure?" — a test 
which, on the face of it, is subjective, not objective. 
So also with regard to colour. There are, of 
course, persons of abnormal vision to whom the 
flower of a geranium appears to possess very much 
the same hue as its leaves. But this throws no 
doubt on what ordinary men mean either by the 
sensation of red, or by a red object. The physical 
quality which constitutes redness is perfectly well 
known, and when its presence in some external 
body is otherwise established, it may be confidently 
foretold that in appropriate conditions it will pro- 
duce the sensation of red in persons normally con- 
stituted. But subject to what has been said above, 
we know nothing of the objective side of beauty. 
When we say that a tune is melodious, or an image 
sublime, or a scene pathetic, the adjectives may 
seem to be predicated of these objects, in precisely 



68 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

the same way as redness is predicated of a gera- 
nium. But it is not so. As I have already ob- 
served, we are merely naming the sentiments they 
produce, not the qualities by which they produce 
them. We cannot describe the higher beauties of 
beautiful objects except in terms of aesthetic feeling 
— and ex vi termini such descriptions are subjective. 

It may, however, be admitted that if there were 
a general agreement about things that are beauti- 
ful, only philosophers would disquiet themselves 
in order to discover in what precisely their beauty 
consisted. But notoriously there is no such agree- 
ment. Difference of race, difference of age, 
different degrees of culture among men of the 
same race and the same age, individual idiosyn- 
crasy and collective fashion occasion, or accom- 
pany, the widest possible divergence of aesthetic 
feeling. The same work of art which moves one 
man to admiration, moves another to disgust; 
what rouses the enthusiasm of one generation, 
leaves another hostile or indifferent. 

These things are undeniable, and are not denied. 
But it is sometimes sought to soften the "individu- 
alist" conclusions to which they lead, by appealing 
from the wild and wandering fancies of ordinary 
men to an aristocracy of taste ; and it must in fair- 
ness be acknowledged that among experts there is 
something distantly approaching a common body 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 69 

of doctrine about the literary and artistic master- 
pieces of the world. Set a dozen contemporary 
critics to make lists of the best books, pictures, 
buildings, operas, and the results will be fairly 
harmonious. These results (it is claimed) may be 
regarded as evidence that among qualified judges 
there is an agreement sufficient to serve as a work- 
ing substitute for some undiscovered, and perhaps 
undiscoverable, criterion of artistic merit. 

But the more we examine the character of this 
agreement among experts the less weight shall we 
feel disposed to attach to it — and for more than 
one reason. In the first place, it must be remem- 
bered that the very fact of its existence has caused 
the cultivated portion of mankind — all who take 
even the most superficial interest in literature and 
art — to fall under the influence of a common 
literary and artistic tradition. This has many 
consequences. It inclines some persons to assume 
an admiration which they do not feel for things 
which everybody round them thinks worthy to be 
admired. Others again keep silence when they 
cannot praise. Nothing, they think, is gained by 
emphasising dissent. Why proclaim from the 
housetops that some author, long since dead, does 
not, in their opinion, deserve the share of fame 
assigned to him by accepted tradition? Let him 
rest. A more important effect is that the unfelt 



70 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

pressure of general opinion produces not merely 
sham professions, but genuine sentiments. Fash- 
ion, whether in clothes or operas, whether in man- 
ners or in morals (as I have shown elsewhere) is 
an influence which, though it may produce some 
hypocrites, most certainly produces many true be- 
lievers. And tradition, though infinitely more 
than mere fashion, is fashion still. 

These considerations require us largely to dis- 
count the agreement prevalent in current estimates 
of literature and art. But there is a more impor- 
tant point still to be noted, which yet further dimin- 
ishes the value of any conclusions which that agree- 
ment may seem to support. For we are bound to 
ask how deep the agreement goes even in the cases 
where in some measure it may be truly said to exist. 
Do critics who would approximately agree in their 
lists of great artists agree as to the order of their 
excellence? Do men of "trained sensibility" feel 
alike in the presence of the same masterpiece? I 
do not believe it. The mood of admiration aroused 
by style, by technical skill, by the command of ma- 
terial and instruments, may well form a common 
ground where competent critics will find them- 
selves in decent agreement. But as the quality of 
aesthetic emotion rises, as we approach the level 
where the sentiment of beauty becomes intense, and 
the passion of admiration incommunicable, there is 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 71 

not — and, I believe, cannot be — any real unanimity 
of personal valuation. On these high peaks men 
never wander in crowds ; they whose paths lie close 
together on the slopes below perforce divide into 
diminishing companies, as each moves upwards 
towards his chosen ideals of excellence. 

If any man doubt that the agreement among 
experts is in some degree artificial, and in some de- 
gree imaginary, let him turn for a moment from the 
critics who have created our literary and artistic 
tradition to the men of genius who have created 
literature and art. No one will deny that they 
were men of "trained sensibility" : no one will main- 
tain that they were agreed. So little, indeed, have 
they been agreed, that the law of change prevailing 
through certain important periods of artistic his- 
tory seems to be based on their disagreement. 
Successive epochs, which show little difference in 
other elements of culture, yet often differ vehe- 
mently in their aesthetic judgments. Action is fol- 
lowed by reaction. A school, at one moment domi- 
nant, gradually decays, and is succeeded by another 
of sharply contrasted characteristics. The art- 
producing fields get wearied, as it were, of a crop 
too often sown ; their harvests dwindle ; until in the 
fullness of time a new vegetation, drawing upon 
fresh sources of nourishment, springs suddenly into 
vigorous and aggressive life. 



72 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

Now, in looking back, either on revolutions like 
these, or on other less abrupt but equally important 
changes, of which the history of literature and art 
shows so many examples, we must not, for the pur- 
poses of the present argument, take up the position 
of the eclectic critic who, calmly appreciative and 
coldly just, sees merits in every school and is im- 
passioned over none. All that my argument re- 
quires is proof that the judgments of great writers 
and artists, especially when they are untamed by 
the orthodoxies of traditions, show none of that 
agreement of which we are in search. Wordsworth 
on the eighteenth century, Boileau on the sixteenth, 
Voltaire on Shakespeare, the French romantics or> 
the French classics, the Renaissance on the Middle 
Ages, are familiar illustrations of the point. And 
if further evidence be required, note how rarely em- 
inent critics endeavour to lead opinion upon new 
artistic developments, and how rarely, when they 
do, they succeed in anticipating the verdict of pos- 
terity — so hesitating is their tread, so uncertain 
their course, when they have no tried tradition 
whereon to lean. 

The same sharp division of taste among those 
who practise an art, somewhat smoothed over and 
blurred by those who subsequently comment on it, 
is illustrated (it seems to me) by the history of 
Gothic architecture. All know well the spectacle 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 73 

of some great cathedral slowly grown to completion 
through the labours of successive generations. We 
neither find, nor expect to find, that the original 
design has been followed throughout. On the con- 
trary, each succeeding school has built its share of 
work in its own style. The fourteenth-century 
architect does nothing as it would have been done 
could the twelfth-century architect have had his 
way ; and the fifteenth century treats the fourteenth 
as the fourteenth treated its predecessors. We 
praise the mixed result, and doubtless we do well. 
But we make, I believe, a great mistake if we at- 
tribute to the mediaeval artists our own mood of 
universal, if somewhat ineffectual, admiration. 
Their point of view was, probably, very different. 
If they refused to build in the old manner, it was 
because they thought the new manner better. They 
thought well of themselves and poorly of their fore- 
fathers. They had the intolerance which so often 
accompanies real creative power. This at least is 
my conjecture. What is not a matter of conjecture 
but of certainty is the way in which the different 
schools of mediaeval architecture were collectively 
condemned by their successors. The barbaric ex- 
travagance of Gothic design was a common-place 
of criticism until the Gothic revival substituted 
tasteless imitation for ignorant contempt. 

Music, however, is the art which perhaps most 



74 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

clearly shows how futile is the search for agreement 
among men of "trained sensibility." It is indeed 
an art which, I may parenthetically observe, has 
many pecuniary merits as a subject of aesthetic 
study. It makes no assertions; so its claims on our 
admiration can have nothing to do with the "True." 
It serves no purpose; so it raises no question as to 
the relation between "the beautiful" and "the 
useful." It copies nothing; so the aesthetic worth 
of imitation and the proper relation of art to 
nature are problems which it never even suggests. 
From the endless controversies about Realism, 
Idealism, and Impressionism, with which the crit- 
icism of other arts have been encumbered, musical 
criticism is thus happily free; while the immense 
changes which have revolutionised both the artistic 
methods and the material resources of the musician 
— changes without a parallel either in literature, in 
painting, in sculpture, or even in architecture — 
have hindered the growth of an orthodox tradition. 
Music thus occupies in some respects a place apart ; 
but its theoretic importance cannot on that account 
be ignored. On the contrary, it becomes all the 
more imperative to remember that no aesthetic prin- 
ciple which fails to apply to it can be other than 
partial and provincial. It can never claim to be a 
law governing the whole empire of artistic beauty. 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 75 

That collisions of expert taste abound in the his- 
tory of music will be generally admitted. But leav- 
ing on one side minor oscillations of opinion, let us 
take, as an illustration of our point, the contrast 
between the beginning and end of the period dur- 
ing which music has played a known part in 
European culture. 

The contrast is certainly most striking. Our 
knowledge of ancient music is unsatisfactory: but it 
seems to be admitted that among the Greeks har- 
mony, in the modern sense, was scarcely used, and 
that their instrumentation was as rudimentary as 
their harmony. Of their compositions we know lit- 
tle. But it is plain that, however exquisite may 
have been the airs rendered by means so modest as 
these, their charms to modern ears would be thin 
and colourless compared with those that modern 
music itself is able to convey — not because the 
Greek genius was inferior, but because it had not 
the means, in this particular art, of giving itself full 
expression. Titian limited to a lead pencil. 

Now this observation, taken by itself, is not, of 
course, relevant to my present argument. It be- 
comes significant only when we compare it with the 
view the Greeks themselves took of their own music. 
To us it seems that this was the one branch of 
artistic production in which they did not attain a 



76 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

certain mature perfection. 1 Even if we assume 
that they did all that could be done with the means 
at their disposal, we must still suppose that the 
poverty of those means most fatally limited their 
powers of artistic creation. But this does not seem 
to have been their own opinion. On the contrary, 
while the architect was counted as little better than 
a skilled artisan, the musician ranked with the poet. 
Music itself they put high among the arts. They 
devoted endless labour to its theory, and their ac- 
counts of its emotional effect would seem exag- 
gerated in the mouths of those familiar with the 
most impassioned strains of modern composers, 
aided by all the resources of a modern orchestra. 
That any tunes, rendered in unison by voice or lyre 
or pipe, or all three together, should be thought by 
grave philosophers so moving as to be a danger to 
society appears incredible. It seems, nevertheless, 
to have been the fact. 

If so, it is a fact which irresistibly suggests that 
the most artistic race the world has seen rated 
aesthetic values on a scale quite different from our 
own. Of their literature and their architecture we 
know much ; of their sculpture we know something. 
Of their music it may be thought that we know 
nothing. But we know both the ardour with which 

1 To be sure we know nothing worth knowing of their 
painting. , 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 77 

it was cultivated, the esteem in which it was held, 
and its narrow limitations. And this knowledge is 
sufficient to prove my thesis. No one can seriously 
suppose that if he were suddenly transported to the 
Athens of Phidias and Sophocles, he would count 
the Greek musician as worthy of a place beside the 
Greek sculptor and the Greek poet! 

I will not further multiply proofs of the deep 
differences by which trained taste is divided. I 
doubt whether, on reflection, anyone will seriously 
question the fact, whatever he may think of the par- 
ticular illustrations by which I have endeavoured to 
establish it. A more fundamental question, how- 
ever, remains behind : What title has the opinion of 
experts to authority in matters sesthetic? Even if 
it showed that agreement in which it is so con- 
spicuously lacking, why should men endeavour to 
mould their feelings into the patterns it prescribes ? 
In the practical affairs of life we follow those who 
have made a special study of some particular prob- 
lem, only because they have greater knowledge 
than ourselves of the relevant facts. But in the 
region of ^Esthetics, what are the relevant facts? 
If the worth of beauty lie in the emotion which it 
occasions, special knowledge can only be of impor- 
tance when it heightens that emotion. It may be a 
stimulus, but how can it be a guide ? 

Now, as I have already pointed out, there are 



78 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

many cases where special knowledge does serve to 
heighten emotion; indeed, there are cases where, 
without that knowledge, no emotion would be felt 
at all. The pleasure consciously derived from mas- 
terly workmanship is one case in point. Another 
is, where a work of art seems nearly unmeaning, 
considered out of its historical setting, and yet 
shines with significant beauty when that setting has 
been provided for us by the labours of the critic. 

But is there not another side to this question? 
Does not the direct appeal made to uncultivated 
receptivity by what critics would describe as very 
indifferent art sometimes produce aesthetic emotion 
which, measured by its intensity, might be envied 
by the most delicate connoisseur? Who shall deny 
that the schoolboy, absorbed in some tale of impos- 
sible adventure, incurious about its author, indif- 
ferent to its style, interested only in the breathless 
succession of heroic endeavours and perilous es- 
capes, is happy in the enjoyment of what is art, 
and nothing but art? If to those of riper years 
and different tastes the art seems poor, does that 
make it poor? Does such a judgment condemn 
either writer or reader? Surely not. The writer, 
to be sure, may be something less than Homer; but 
the spirit of the reader — simple, credulous, enjoy- 
ing—is the spirit in which, of bid, before criticism 
was born, some Greek king and his high-born guests 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 79 

listened to the tale of Troy and the wanderings 
of Ulysses. 

I do not, of course, either say or think that the 
pleasures of art diminish as the knowledge of art 
augments. Some loss there commonly is, as men 
grow old and learned ; yet we may hope that in most 
cases it is compensated a hundred-fold. But it is 
not always so. In popular usage the very word 
"criticism" suggests the detection of faults and the 
ignoring of merits ; in popular esteem the refusal to 
admire marks the man of taste. This singular view, 
which suggests the inference that artistic education 
is an instrument for making men fastidious and 
preventing them being happy, derives, it may be, 
some faint support from facts. Are there not per- 
sons to be found who have sharpened the delicacy 
of their aesthetic discrimination to the finest edge, 
yet take but small pleasure in beauty — who are 
the oracles of artistic societies, the terror (or per- 
haps the Providence) of rich collectors, whom no 
copy can deceive, nor any original delight ? Surely 
the worst taste in the world is better than taste so 
good as this! 

Such temperaments are rare. But even their 
possibility suggests a problem which seems to me 
most difficult of solution. If there be no objective 
standard of merit, and the degree of aesthetic emo- 
tion which a work of art produces be the only 



80 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

measure of its excellence, how are the elements 
which make up that emotion to be compared? What 
(more particularly) is to be allowed for quality, 
what for quantity? — vague terms, though suffi- 
ciently intelligible for my purpose. 

Consider, for example, this case. There have 
been in Literature — indeed, I think in all the arts 
— men of delicate or peculiar genius, whose works 
make little appeal to the crowd, yet find at intervals 
through many generations a few devoted lovers. 
Their names may have an established place in his- 
tory, and their writings be read for purposes of 
study or examination. But the number of those 
who really feel their charm is small. Count them, 
and they would not in a century equal the audi- 
ences which in six months are moved to tears or 
laughter by some popular play. Which, then, of 
these two, contributes most to the aesthetic pleasures 
of the world — the play which, in its brief moment 
of favour, gives widespread delight, or the poem 
(if poem it be) which is long remembered but little 
read? 

No one would give his verdict for the play. Yet 
why not ? It is, I suppose, because we rate the deli- 
cate pleasure given by the poem as higher in 
"quality," though it be smaller in "quantity" than 
the commoner joys supplied wholesale by its rival. 
And this may be perfectly right. Beyond doubt, 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 81 

there are real distinctions, corresponding to such 
words as "higher" and "lower," "refined" and 
"commonplace"; beyond doubt, we cannot regard 
aesthetic emotion as a homogeneous entity, undif- 
ferentiated in quality, simply to be measured as 
"more" or "less." This makes it hard enough for a 
man to determine a scale of values which shall hon- 
estly represent his own aesthetic experience. But 
does it not make it absolutely hopeless to find a 
scale which shall represent, even in the roughest 
approximation, the experiences of mankind? The 
task is inherently impossible ; and it is made doubly 
impossible by the difficulty we all find in excluding 
irrelevant considerations. The thing to be discov- 
ered being what men do feel, we are always consid- 
ering what, if their taste was good, they ought to 
feel; what, if they were properly trained, they 
would feel; what it is best for their spiritual well- 
being that they should feel, and so forth. None of 
which questions, important and interesting as they 
are, assist us to discover or to apply a scale of 
values based merely on the aesthetic emotions 
actually experienced. 

II 

The conclusions so far reached are in the main 
negative. We have had to reject the idea that a 
standard of excellence can either be extracted by 



82 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

critical analysis from the practice of accepted mod- 
els, or that it can be based on the consensus of ex- 
perts, or upon universal suffrage. We must recog- 
nise that, while training is necessary to the com- 
prehension, and therefore to the full enjoyment, of 
many works of art — while, in particular, the sym- 
pathetic delight in masterly workmanship can 
hardly be obtained without it — few aesthetic emo- 
tions exceed in intensity the simple raptures 
aroused in naive souls by works which instructed 
criticism would often refuse to admire. And we 
must own that if, defeated in the attempt to base 
our judgments on authority, we endeavour to base 
them on general experience; if we say that that is 
the greatest aesthetic performance which gives to 
mankind the greatest aesthetic delight — we are 
brought face to face with countless difficulties; 
among which not the least is the difficulty of saying 
what is the greatest aesthetic delight, when the 
greatness which has to be measured is a value de- 
pendent on the "quality" of the delight, as well as 
on its "quantity." 

Now to those who approach aesthetics from the 
side of psychology, all these conclusions seem nat- 
ural enough. For it is only among the simple or- 
ganic pleasures — the pleasures of sense — that, as 
between man and man, approximate uniformity of 
pleasurable experience might be antecedently ex- 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 83 

pected. All persons who can taste at all are agreed 
as to what is sweet and what is bitter; and all chil- 
dren, at least, are agreed that the first is nice and 
the second is nasty. Maturer palates no doubt may 
be variously affected by the finer aspects of the 
culinary art; but though differences of custom be- 
tween communities, and differences of sense- 
perception between individuals, mar the original 
uniformity of judgment, yet on the whole the civi- 
lised world is fairly agreed as to what it likes to eat 
and drink. But in the region of aesthetics conditions 
are very different. There association of ideas plays 
so important a part in the creation of taste, the 
feeling of beauty springs from psychological 
causes so complex and so subtle, that we need feel 
no surprise at its being occasioned in different peo- 
ple by different objects. In the pleasures of sense 
we never get very far from the innate physiological 
qualities in which men are most alike. In the 
pleasures of aesthetics we are very largely con- 
cerned with the qualities in which men most vary — 
education, experience, beliefs, traditions, customs. 
The strange thing is not that there should be so 
little agreement in critical judgments as that there 
should be so much: though, to be sure, the agree- 
ment is, as I have already pointed out, often more 
apparent than real. This, however, is no consola- 
tion to those who cannot willingly part with the be- 



84 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

lief that in art there is a "right" and a "wrong," 
as well as a "more pleasing" and a "less pleasing." 
A theory which makes every man a law unto him- 
self, which shatters anything in the nature of an 
independent standard, which barely admits the 
theoretic possibility of arriving at some rough esti- 
mate of the aesthetic values actually realised in ex- 
perience, is to them well-nigh intolerable. It seems 
to make our highest ideals the sport of individual 
caprice, to reduce the essence of beauty to individ- 
ual feeling, and in so doing to make it no more than 
the transitory consequence of chance suscepti- 
bilities, or the incalculable by-product of social 
evolution. 

The reluctance to accept such views has (often 
unconsciously) driven some critical theorists to 
strange expedients. If the dignity of art be low- 
ered by the instability of aesthetic values, it might, 
they think, be raised by an alliance with other great 
spiritual interests. An artist is therefore deemed 
to be more than the maker of beautiful things. He 
is a seer, a moralist, a prophet. He must intui- 
tively penetrate the realities which lie behind this 
world of shows. At the lowest he must supply 
"a criticism of life." In much of Ruskin's work 
aesthetics, theology, and morals are inextricably in- 
tertwined. In the criticisms by smaller men, the 
same thing has been done in a smaller way; and 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 85 

obiter dicta based on the view that good art is al- 
ways something more than art, that it not only 
creates beauty, but symbolically teaches philos- 
ophy, religion, ethics, even science, are constantly 
to be found in the purple passages of enthusiastic 
commentators on poetry, music, and painting. 

For myself I admit that I require a mystical 
supplement to that strictly critical view of beauty 
and art with which alone I am now concerned. But 
nothing is gained by pretending that we have 
reached the point where the two can be blended in 
one harmonious system. So far as I can see we 
are not near it. In particular I can find no justi- 
fication in experience for associating great art with 
penetrating insight, or good art with good morals. 
Optimism and pessimism; materialism and spirit- 
ualism; theism, pantheism, atheism; morality and 
immorality; religion and irreligion; lofty resigna- 
tion and passionate revolt — each and all have in- 
spired or helped to inspire the creators of artistic 
beauty. It would even (I suppose) be rash con- 
fidently to assert that the "everlasting Yea" pro- 
vides material more easily moulded to the uses of 
high imagination than the "everlasting Nay"; 
while it is certain that cheap cynicism and petty 
spite have supplied the substance of literary 
achievements which we could ill afford to lose. 

To a very different order of thought belong the 



86 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

vast metaphysical structures of German philoso- 
phers. Yet they also have been greatly concerned 
to find for aesthetics a fitting niche in the eternal 
framework of the transcendental "whole." No one 
will suggest that their efforts have been half- 
hearted, or that their task has been undertaken in 
other than the most serious spirit. But it would 
plainly be impossible properly to discuss beauty 
and metaphysics in a lecture devoted to beauty 
and criticism. It is perhaps the less necessary to 
make the attempt since I do not remember that in 
this country, with the exception of Professor Bo- 
sanquet, metaphysicians, even those most in sym- 
pathy with the general attitude of the great tran- 
scendentalists, have dwelt at length upon their 
aesthetic speculations. However this may be, I 
cannot, for my own part, find that these have pro- 
vided me with any way of escape from the difficul- 
ties which I most acutely feel. I get no aid from 
such doctrine as that "aesthetics is the meeting-point 
of reason and understanding," or that "it is the 
sensible expression of the idea," or that "it is the 
expression of the unconscious will." In truth 
these views labour under the disadvantage that, 
while they are almost meaningless to those who 
cannot accept the systems of which they are a frag- 
ment, they are not, I think (though I speak with 
diffidence), enthusiastically adopted even by those 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 87 

to whose general way of thinking those systems are 
congenial. 

The result, then, of this concise survey of a great 
subject is negative. Apart from transcendental 
metaphysics, I have said enough (in my belief at 
least) to show that neither considered in them- 
selves, nor in their relation to any wider outlook, 
can our valuations of beauty claim "objective" va- 
lidity. We can say of a work of art or a scene in 
nature — "this moves me"; we may partially dis- 
tinguish the elements which produce the total re- 
sult and attempt some estimate of their worth sep- 
arately as well as in combination ; we may compare 
aesthetic merit in respect of quality as well as quan- 
tity, saying, for example, of one thing — "this is 
great" 1 ; of another — "this is exquisite," of a third 
— "this is merely pretty," and so on. But beyond 
statements embodying personal valuations like 
these we can rarely go. We cannot devise a code 
of criticism. We cannot define the dogmas of 
aesthetic orthodoxy. We can appeal neither to rea- 
son, nor experience, nor authority. Ideals of 
beauty change from generation to generation. 
Those who produce works of art disagree; those 
who comment on works of art disagree; while the 
multitude, anxious to admire where they "ought," 

1 "Great" in criticism commonly expresses quality, not mere 
quantity. 



88 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

and pathetically reluctant to admire where they 
"ought not," disagree like their teachers. 

What then, it may be asked, have I to offer in 
mitigation of a view which seems so degrading 
to emotions and activities which we rate (truly, I 
think) among the highest of which we are capable? 
Not much, perhaps ; not enough, certainly ; yet still 
something. 

For what are the aesthetic emotions about which 
we have been occupied in these pages? They are 
the highest members of a great class whose com- 
mon characteristic is that they do not lead to action. 
It is their peculiarity and their glory that they 
have nothing to do with business, with the adapta- 
tion of means to ends, with the bustle and the dust 
of life. They are impractical and purposeless. 
They serve no interest, and further no cause. They 
are self-sufficing, and neither point to any good be- 
yond themselves, nor overflow except by accident 
into any practical activities. 

This statement is no doubt open to many misun- 
derstandings. I will mention some, though I will 
not dwell on them. It may be said, for instance, 
that the description is incomplete in that it refers 
only to those who enjoy works of art, not to those 
who create them. It deals with readers, not au- 
thors; hearers, not musicians; those who look at 
pictures, not those who paint them. This is true, 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 89 

but is surely no objection. I am concerned here 
with the criticism of beauty — not with its produc- 
tion. These are separate matters, and should be 
separately considered. 

Again, it may be asked — how can aesthetic feel- 
ings be described as essentially purposeless and 
self-sufficing? Does sacred art aim only at pro- 
ducing emotion divorced from action? Has archi- 
tecture nothing to do with the adaptation of means 
to ends? Are military marches primarily com- 
posed for those who listen to them in tea-gardens? 

But this is to confuse the object of the artist 
with the feelings of those who enjoy his art. Now 
undoubtedly the objects of the artist may be mani- 
fold. Milton, as we know, wrote Paradise Lost in 
order (among other things) to "justify the ways 
of God to man." We read him, however, for his 
poetry, not for his theology ; and it is only with the 
aesthetic side of his, or any other artist's, work that 
we are here concerned. 

But again, it may be said that, quite irrespective 
of the deliberate intention of the artist, the emo- 
tions he suggests may tend to foster dispositions 
which, for good or ill, have far-reaching effects on 
practice. This again is true. Most persons admit 
that art may "elevate." It is scarcely to be denied 
that it may also demoralise. But this does not 
touch the point. We may surely hold that the use 



90 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

or abuse of contemplative pleasures affects char- 
acter, and yet deny that these pleasures are imme- 
diately related to action. 

But one further observation seems to be required 
in the way of explanation. I have described 
aesthetic feelings as "members of a great class." 
What does this mean? What are the other mem- 
bers of the class? They are many, and the ex- 
periences which occasion them are infinite in their 
variety. Some are emotionally valueless: others 
are worse than valueless — they are displeasing. Of 
those which possess value some are closely allied to 
aesthetic feeling proper — for instance, the delight 
in what (outside art) is fitting and harmonious, the 
appreciation of neatness, finish, and skill. Of a 
different kind are the pleasures of intellectual ap- 
prehension; those, for example, which are aroused 
by a far-reaching scientific generalisation, or the 
solution, brilliant in its simplicity, of some compli- 
cated and entangled problem. These pleasures 
may be very vivid; they may also be far removed 
from all practical interests. They must therefore 
be regarded as contemplative, though it would vio- 
late ordinary usage to describe them as aesthetic. 

There are, however, other kinds of feeling which 
are closely associated with the practical side of life. 
These always look beyond themselves; if not 
prompting some action they are always on the edge 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 91 

of prompting it. Action is their fitting and charac- 
teristic issue. Like the feelings which I have 
loosely described as contemplative, they are often 
intrinsically worthless, or worse than worthless. 
Thus the sentiment of fear, though presumably it 
has its uses, can never in itself be either agreeable 
or noble. But some emotions there are belonging 
to the active class which possess the highest intrinsic 
value of which we have any knowledge. Such is 
love — love of God, of country, of family, of friends. 
These emotions, like those of fear or appetite, will, 
on fit occasions, inevitably result in deeds ; nor can 
they be considered genuine, if in this respect they 
fail. But they have an inherent value apart from 
their practical effects. We cannot measure their 
worth solely by their external consequences: if we 
attempt it, we fall inevitably into the gravest error. 
The distinction, it should be observed, between 
these two classes of feelings does not necessarily 
imply that they are excited by different kinds of ob- 
jects. On the contrary, the same object may, and 
constantly does, excite feelings of both kinds. The 
splendours of a tempestuous sunset seen from a 
sheltered balcony give contemplative delight of a 
high order. The same spectacle, seen by a footsore 
traveller across a naked moor, may be only a spur 
to painful effort. A trumpet heard in a concert- 
room merely heightens an orchestral effect; heard 



92 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

in camp, it imperiously calls to arms. And (to give 
one more illustration) wars and revolutions, the 
struggles of nations and of creeds, are one thing to 
a man who shares them, quite another to the man 
who reads of them in history. While history itself 
is, to those who study it for sheer interest in the 
doings of mankind, an art, and one of the greatest ; 
to those who study it that they may "learn its les- 
sons," refute a political opponent, or pass a com- 
petitive examination, no more than a branch of 
useful knowledge. 

Here, then, we have two great divisions of feel- 
ing — the one self-sufficing, contemplative, not look- 
ing beyond its own boundaries nor except by acci- 
dent prompting to action; the other lying at the 
root of conduct, always having some external ref- 
erence, supplying the immediate motive for all the 
doings of mankind. Of highest value in the con- 
templative division is the feeling of beauty; of 
highest value in the active division is the feeling of 
love. It is with these two only that I am here con- 
cerned, and it is on the comparison between them 
that my final contention is founded. 

For what was it that occasioned, and I hope jus- 
tified, this excursion into regions apparently far 
removed from the primary subject of this lecture? 
It was the desire to mitigate as far as possible the 
conclusions to which, in the vain search for some 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 93 

standard of aesthetic excellence, we seemed irresist- 
ibly driven. I see no method of refuting those con- 
clusions; the arguments on which they rest, to me 
at least, appear irresistible. But are they so very 
alarming? Do they necessarily lead to a perverse 
and sceptical individualism? Does the destruction 
of aesthetic orthodoxy carry with it, as an indirect 
but inevitable consequence, the diminution of 
aesthetic values? I think not. And I think not, 
because no such consequences follow from a like 
state of things in the great class of feelings which I 
have described as active or "practical." Love is 
governed by no abstract principles. It obeys no 
universal rules. It knows no objective standard. 
It is obstinately recalcitrant to logic. Why should 
we be impatient because we can give no account of 
the characteristics common to all that is beautiful, 
when we can give no account of the characteris- 
tics common to all that is lovable? It may be easy 
enough for the sociologist to explain in general 
terms how necessary it is for the well-being of any 
community that there should be found among its 
members a widespread capacity for disinterested 
affection. And it is not hard to show that, in the 
general interests, it is highly desirable that this af- 
fection should flow, in the main, along certain well- 
defined channels. It is better, for example, that a 
man should love his own country and his own f am- 



94 CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 

ily, than someone else's country and someone else's 
family. But though ethical, religious, and utili- 
tarian considerations are thus bound up more 
closely with our practical emotions than with our 
contemplative ones, we can make abstraction of 
them in the one case as in the other. And if we 
do, will it be found easier to fix a measure of the 
"lovable" than we have found it to fix a measure of 
the beautiful? I do not believe it. We talk indeed 
of some person or some collection of persons 
possessing qualities which deserve our love. And 
the phrase is not unmeaning. It has, as we have 
seen, its parallel in the region of aesthetics. But 
love in its intensest quality does not go by deserts, 
any more than aesthetic feeling in its intensest qual- 
ity depends on any measurable excellence. That is 
for every man most lovable which he most dearly 
loves. That is for every man most beautiful which 
he most deeply admires. Nor is this merely a reit- 
eration of the old adage that there is no disputing 
about tastes. It goes far deeper; for it implies 
that, in the most important cases of all, a dispute 
about either love or beauty would not merely be 
useless : it would be wholly unmeaning. 

Let us, then, be content, since we can do no 
better, that our admirations should be even as our 
loves. I do not offer this advice as a theory of 
aesthetics, nor even as a substitute for such a theory. 



CRITICISM OF BEAUTY 95 

I must repeat, indeed, that so far as I am con- 
cerned, it represents a point of view which is not 
tolerable, even provisionally, unless there be added 
to it some mystical reference to first and final 
causes. This, however, opens a train of thought far 
outside the scope of the present lecture ; far outside 
the scope of any lecture that I am qualified to de- 
liver. For us, here and now, it must suffice that 
however clearly we may recognise the failure of 
critical theory to establish the "objective 5 ' reality of 
beauty, the failure finds a parallel in other regions 
of speculation, and that nevertheless, with or with- 
out theoretical support, admiration and love are 
the best and greatest possessions which we have it 
in our power to enjoy. 



PART ONE: SPECULATIVE 

III: BERGSON'S CREATIVE 
EVOLUTION 



Ill 

BERGSON'S CREATIVE EVOLUTION 1 



I have been requested by the Editor of the 
Hibbert Journal to indicate the bearing which M. 
Bergson's Evolution creatrice has upon the line of 
speculation which I have long endeavoured to rec- 
ommend to those who are interested in such 
matters. 

If I accept the invitation, it is not because I im- 
agine that any widespread interest is felt in my 
philosophical opinions, still less because I suppose 
them to provide a standard of comparison against 
which such theories as those of M. Bergson may 
fittingly be measured. It is rather because, in deal- 
ing with a writer whose range is so wide, some lim- 
itation of commentary is desirable; and, in the na- 
ture of things, the limitation suggested by the 
Editor is the one most suited to my particular ca- 
pacities. It may involve some appearance of ego- 

1 Article contributed to the Hibbert Journal, October 1911. 

©9 



100 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

tism; but I trust the reader will understand that it 
is appearance only. 

The problems in which philosophy is interested 
may, of course, be approached from many sides; 
and schemes of philosophy may be cast in many 
moulds. The great metaphysical systems — those 
which stand out as landmarks in the history of 
speculation — have commonly professed some all- 
inclusive theory of reality. In their theories of the 
One and the Many, it is the One rather than any 
individual specimen of the Many which has mainly 
interested them. In the sweep of their soaring 
speculation, the individual thinker, and the matters 
which most closely concern him, vanish into negli- 
gible particularity. There is room for them, of 
course, because in such systems there is room for 
everything. But they hardly count. 

Now it must be owned that when the universe 
is in question, we and our affairs are very unim- 
portant. But each several man has a position, as 
of right, in his own philosophy, from which nothing 
can exclude him. His theory of things, if he has 
one, is resolvable into separate beliefs, which are 
his beliefs. In so far as it is a reasoned theory, 
these beliefs must be rationally selected; and in 
every system of rationally selected beliefs there 
must be some which are accepted as inferences, 
while there must be others whose acceptability is 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 101 

native, not derived, which are believed on their own 
merits, and which, if the system were ever com- 
pleted, would be the logical foundations of the 
whole. Some beliefs may indeed have both attri- 
butes ; the light they give may be in part original, 
in part reflected. We may even conceive a system 
tentatively constructed out of elements which are 
first clearly seen to be true only when they are 
looked at as parts of a self-evident whole; cases in 
which one might almost say (but not quite) that the 
conclusion is the proof of the premises, rather than 
the premises of the conclusion. 

It will be observed that this way of looking at 
philosophy makes each individual thinker the cen- 
tre of his own system — not, of course, the most im- 
portant element in it as known, but the final au- 
thority which justifies him in saying he knows it. 
The ideal order of beliefs as set out in such a sys- 
tem would be the order of logic — not necessarily 
formal logic, but at least an order of rational inter- 
dependence. There is, however, another way in 
which beliefs might be arranged — namely, the 
causal order. They may be looked at from the point 
of view proper to psychology, instead of from that 
proper to philosophy. They may be looked at not 
merely as premises but as causes, not merely as con- 
clusions but as effects ; and so looked at, it is at once 
obvious that among the causes of belief reasons 



102 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

often play a very trifling part, and that among the 
effects of reason we cannot count conclusions which 
logically might be drawn, but in fact are not. 

This general way of considering philosophic 
problems, which throws the primary stress not on 
what is first in the absolute order of reality, nor 
first in order of practical interest, but what is first 
in order of logic for the individual thinker, was 
forced upon me ( I speak of a time more than forty 
years ago) by a condition of things in the world of 
speculation which has since greatly changed. In 
those days, at least at the English Universities, the 
dominating influences were John Mill and Herbert 
Spencer — Mill even more than Spencer. Their 
doctrines, or a general attitude of mind in harmony 
with their doctrines, penetrated far more deeply 
into the mental tissue of the "enlightened" than has 
been the case with subsequent philosophies. The 
fashionable creed of "advanced" thinkers was scien- 
tific agnosticism. And the cardinal principles of 
scientific agnosticism taught that all knowledge 
was from experience, that all experience was of 
phenomena, that all we can learn from the expe- 
rience of phenomena are the laws of phenomena, 
and that if these are not the real, then is the real un- 
knowable, To their "credo" was appended an ap- 
propriate anathema, condemning all those who be- 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 103 

lieved what they could not prove, as sinners against 
reason and truth. 

Theories like these were a challenge ; a challenge, 
however, that could be taken up in more ways than 
one. It might be said, as metaphysics and theology 
did say, that reason, properly interrogated, car- 
ries us far beyond phenomena and the laws of 
phenomena. On the other hand, attention might 
be concentrated not on what the agnostics said was 
unknowable, but on what they said was known. If 
the great desideratum is untrammelled criticism of 
beliefs, let us begin with the beliefs of "positive 
knowledge." If we are to believe nothing but what 
we can prove, let us see what it is that we can prove. 

I attempted some studies on these lines in a work 
published in 1879. 1 And I am still of opinion that 
the theory of experience and of induction from ex- 
perience needs further examination; that the rela- 
tion between a series of beliefs connected logically, 
and the same beliefs mixed up in a natural series 
of cause and effects, involves speculative difficulties 
of much interest; and that investigations into the 
ultimate grounds of belief had better begin with 
the beliefs which everybody holds than with those 
which are held only by a philosophic or religious 
minority. 

It is true that isolated fragments of these prob- 

1 A Defence of Philosophic Doubt. 



104 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

lems have long interested philosophers. Achilles 
still pursues the tortoise, and the difficulties of the 
chase still provide a convenient text on which to 
preach conflicting doctrines of the Infinite. The 
question as to what exactly is given in immediate 
experience, and by what logical or inductive proc- 
ess anything can be inferred from it; the nature 
of causation, the grounds of our conviction that 
Nature obeys laws, how a law can be discovered, 
and whether "obeying laws" is the same as having a 
determined order — these, or some of these, have no 
doubt been subjects of debate. But even now there 
is not, so far as I know, any thoroughgoing treat- 
ment of the subject as I conceive it; and certainly 
Mill, who was supposed to have uttered the last 
word on empirical inference, stared helplessly at 
its difficulties through two volumes of logic, and 
left them unsolved at the end. 

It was not on these lines, however, that the reac- 
tion against the reigning school of philosophy was 
to be pursued. In the last twenty years or so of 
the nineteenth century came (in England) the 
great idealist revival. For the first time since 
Locke the general stream of British philosophy re- 
joined, for good or evil, the main continental river. 
And I should suppose that now in 1911 the bulk of 
philosophers belong to the neo-Kantian or neo- 
Hegelian school. I do not know that this has 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 105 

greatly influenced either the general public or the 
scientific world. But, without question, it has 
greatly affected not merely professed philosophers, 
but students of theology with philosophic leanings. 
The result has been that whereas, when Mill and 
Spencer dominated the schools, "naturalism" was 
thought to have philosophy at its back, that advan- 
tage, for what it is worth, was transferred to re- 
ligion. I do not mean that philosophy became the 
ally of any particular form of orthodoxy, but that 
it advocated a spiritual view of the Universe, and 
was therefore quite inconsistent with "naturalism." 
Though I may not count myself as an idealist, I 
can heartily rejoice in the result. But it could 
obviously give me very little assistance in my own 
attempts to develop the negative speculations of 
philosophic doubt into a constructive, if provi- 
sional, system. With the arguments of Founda- 
tions of Belief I do not propose to trouble the 
reader. But it may make clearer what I have to say 
about Ultvolution creatrice if I mention that 
(among other conclusions) I arrive at the convic- 
tion that in accepting science, as we all do, we are 
moved by "values," not by logic. That if we ex- 
amine fearlessly the grounds on which judgments 
about the material world are founded, we shall 
find that they rest on postulates about which it is 
equally impossible to say that we can theoretically 



106 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

regard them as self-evident, or practically treat 
them as doubtful. We can neither prove them nor 
give them up. "Concede" (I argued) the same 
philosophic weight to values in departments of 
speculation which look beyond the material world, 
and naturalism will have to be abandoned. But the 
philosophy of science would not lose thereby. On 
the contrary, an extension of view beyond phe- 
nomena diminishes rather than increases the the- 
oretical difficulties with which bare naturalism is 
beset. It is not by a mere reduction in the area of 
our beliefs that, in the present state of our knowl- 
edge, certainty and consistency are to be reached. 
Such a reduction could not be justified by philos- 
ophy. But justifiable or not, it would be quite im- 
practicable. "Values" refuse to be ignored. 

A scheme of thought so obviously provisional has 
no claim to be a system. And the question there- 
fore arises — at least, it arises for me — whether the 
fruitful philosophic labours of the last twenty years 
have found answers to the problem which I find 
most perplexing? I cannot pretend to have fol- 
lowed as closely as I should have desired the re- 
cent developments of speculation in Britain and 
America— still less in Germany, France, or Italy. 
Even were it otherwise, I could not profitably dis- 
cuss them within the compass of an article. But 
the invitation to consider from this point of view a 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 107 

work so important as Ultvolution creairice, by an 
author so distinguished as M. Bergson, I have 
found irresistible. 

ii 

There cannot be a topic which provides a more 
fitting text for what I have to say in this connec- 
tion than freedom. To the idealist, absolute 
spirit is free ; though when we come to the individ- 
ual soul I am not sure that its share of freedom 
amounts (in most systems) to very much. To the 
naturalistic thinker there is, of course, no absolute, 
and no soul. Psychic phenomena are a function of 
the nervous system. The nervous system is mate- 
rial, and obeys the laws of matter. Its behaviour 
is as rigidly determined as the planetary orbits, and 
might be accurately deduced by a being sufficiently 
endowed with powers of calculation, from the dis- 
tribution of matter, motion, and force, when the 
solar system was still nebular. To me, who am 
neither idealist nor naturalist, freedom is a reality; 
partly because, on ethical grounds, I am not pre- 
pared to give it up; partly because any theory 
which, like "naturalism," requires reason to be me- 
chanically determined, is (I believe) essentially in- 
coherent; partly because if we abandon mechanical 
determinism in the case of reason, it seems absurd 
to retain it in the case of will; partly because it 



108 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

seems impossible to find room for the self and its 
psychic states in the interstices of a rigid sequence 
of material causes and effects. Yet the material 
sequence is there; the self and its states are there; 
and I do not pretend to have arrived at a satis- 
factory view of their reciprocal relations. I keep 
them both, conscious of their incompatibilities. 

A bolder line is taken by M. Bergson, and his 
point of view, be it right or wrong, is certainly far 
more interesting. He is not content with refusing 
to allow mechanical or any other form of deter- 
minism to dominate life. He makes freedom the 
very corner-stone of his system — freedom in its 
most aggressive shape. Life is free, life is spon- 
taneous, life is incalculable. It is not indeed out of 
relation to matter, for matter clogs and hampers it. 
But not by matter is its direction wholly deter- 
mined, not from matter is its forward impulse 
derived. 

As we know it upon this earth, life resembles 
some great river system, pouring in many channels 
across the plain. Our stream dies away sluggishly 
in the sand, another loses itself in some inland lake, 
while a third, more powerful or more fortunate, 
drives its tortuous and arbitrary windings further 
and yet further from the snows that gave it birth. 

The metaphor, for which M. Bergson should not 
be made responsible, may serve to emphasise some 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 109 

leading portions of his theory. What the banks of 
the stream are to its current, that matter in gen- 
eral, and the living organism in particular, is to ter- 
restrial life. They modify its course; they do not 
make it move. So life presses on by its own inher- 
ent impulse; not unhampered by the inert mass 
through which it flows, yet constantly struggling 
with it, eating patiently into the most recalcitrant 
rock, breaking through the softer soil in channels 
the least foreseen, never exactly repeating its past, 
never running twice the same course. The meta- 
phor, were it completed, would suggest that as the 
rivers, through all the windings imposed on them 
by the channel which they themselves have made, 
press ever towards the sea, so life has some end to 
which its free endeavours are directed. But this 
is not M. Bergson's view. He objects to teleology 
only less than to mechanical determinism. And, if 
I understand him aright, the vital impulse has no 
goal more definite than that of acquiring an ever 
fuller volume of free creative activity. 

But what in M. Bergson's theory corresponds to 
the sources of these multitudinous streams of life? 
Whence come they? The life we see — the life of 
plants, of animals, of men — has its origin in the 
single life which he calls super-consciousness, above 
matter and beyond it; which divides, like the snow- 
fields of our simile, into various lines of flow, cor- 



110 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

responding to the lines of organic development de- 
scribed by evolutionary biology. But as the orig- 
inal source of organic life is free, indeterminate, 
and incalculable, so this quality never utterly disap- 
pears from its derivative streams, entangled and 
thwarted though they be by matter. Life, even the 
humblest life, does not wholly lose its original 
birthright, nor does it succumb completely to its 
mechanical environment. 

Now it is evident that if the ultimate reality is 
this free creative activity, time must occupy a posi- 
tion in M. Bergson's philosophy quite other than 
that which it holds in any of the great metaphysical 
systems. For in these, time and temporal relation 
are but elements within an Absolute, itself con- 
ceived as timeless; whereas M. Bergson's Absolute 
almost resolves itself into time — evolving, as it were 
by a free effort, new forms at each instant of a con- 
tinuous flow. A true account of the Absolute 
would therefore take the form of history. It would 
tell us of the Absolute that has been and is, the 
Absolute "up to date." Of the Absolute that is to 
be, no account can be given; its essential contin- 
gency puts its future beyond the reach of any 
powers of calculation, even were those powers 
infinite in their grasp. 

Now this view of reality, expounded by its author 
with a wealth of scientific as well as of philosophical 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 111 

knowledge which must make his writings fascinating 
and instructive to those who least agree with them, 
suggests far more questions than it would be pos- 
sible merely to catalogue, much less to discuss, 
within the limits of this paper. But there is one 
aspect of the theory from my point of view of 
fundamental interest on which something must be 
said — I mean the relation of M. Bergson's free cre- 
ative consciousness to organised life and to unor- 
ganised matter — to that physical Universe with 
which biology, chemistry, and physics are concerned. 

This subject may be considered from three points 
of view : ( 1 ) the relation of organic life to the mat- 
ter in which it is immersed; (2) the relation of 
primordial life and consciousness to matter in gen- 
eral; (3) our justification for arriving at conclu- 
sions under either of these heads. 

M. Bergson, while denying that life — will — 
consciousness, as we know them on this earth of 
ours, are mere functions of the material organism, 
does not, as we have seen, deny that they, in a sense, 
depend on it. They depend on it as a workman 
depends on a tool. It limits him, though he uses it. 

Now the way in which life uses the organism in 
which it is embodied is by releasing at will the 
energy which the organism has obtained directly or 
indirectly from the sun — directly in the case of 
plants, indirectly in the case of animals. The plants 



112 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

hoard much but use little. The animals appropriate 
their savings. 

To M. Bergson, therefore, organised life essen- 
tially shows itself in the sudden and quasi-explosive 
release of these accumulations. Indeed he carries 
this idea so far as to suggest that any material 
system which should store energy by arresting its 
degradation to some lower level, 1 and should pro- 
duce effects by its sudden liberation, would exhibit 
something in the nature of life. But this is surely 
going too far. There are plenty of machines used 
for manufacturing or domestic purposes which do 
just this; while in the realm of Nature there seems 
no essential physical distinction between (on the 
one hand) the storing up of solar radiation by plants 
and its discharge in muscular action; and (on the 
other) the slow production of aqueous vapour, and 
its discharge during a thunderstorm in torrential 
rain. Yet all would admit that the first is life, while 
the second is but mechanism. 

It is rash to suggest that a thinker like M. Berg- 
son has wrongly emphasised his own doctrines. Yet 
I venture, with great diffidence, to suggest that the 
really important point in this part of his theory, the 
point where his philosophy breaks finally with 

1 This refers to the second law of thermodynamics. It is 
interesting to observe that M. Bergson regards this as philo- 
sophically more important than the first law. 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 113 

"mechanism," the point where freedom and indeter- 
minism are really introduced into the world of space 
and matter, is only indirectly connected with the 
bare fact that in organic life accumulated energy is 
released. What is really essential is the manner of 
its release. If the release be effected by pure mech- 
anism, fate still reigns supreme. If, on the other 
hand, there be anything in the mode of release, 
however trifling, which could not be exhaustively 
accounted for by the laws of matter and motion, 
then freedom gains a foothold in the very citadel of 
necessity. Make the hair-trigger which is to cause 
the discharge as delicate as you please, yet if it be 
pulled by forces dependent wholly upon the con- 
figuration and energy of the material universe at 
the moment, you are nothing advanced. Determin- 
ism still holds you firmly in its grip. But if there 
be introduced into the system a new force — in other 
words, a new creation — though it be far too minute 
for any instrument to register, then if it either pull 
the trigger or direct the explosion, the reality of 
contingency is established, and our whole conception 
of the physical world is radically transformed. 

This, I conceive, must be M. Bergson's view. 
But his theory of the relation between life — freedom 
— will, on the one side, and matter on the other, 
goes much further than the mere assertion that there 
is in fact an element of contingency in the move- 



114 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

ments of living organisms. For he regards this 
both as a consequence and as a sign of an effort 
made by creative will to bring mechanism more and 
more under the control of freedom. Such efforts 
have, as biology tells us, often proved abortive. 
Some successes that have been won have had again 
to be surrendered. Advance, as in the case of many 
parasites, has been followed by retrogression. By 
comparing the molluscs, whose torpid lives have 
been repeating themselves without sensible varia- 
tion through all our geological records, with man, in 
whom is embodied the best we know of conscious- 
ness and will, we may measure the success which 
has so far attended the efforts of super-conscious- 
ness in this portion of the Universe. 

I say, in this portion of the Universe, because 
M. Bergson thinks it not only possible but probable 
that elsewhere in space the struggle between free- 
dom and necessity, between life and matter, may 
be carried on through the sudden liberation of other 
forms of energy than those which plants accumulate 
by forcibly divorcing the oxygen and the carbon 
atoms combined in our atmosphere. The specula- 
tion is interesting, though, from the point of view 
of science, somewhat hazardous. From the point of 
view of M. Bergson's metaphysic, however, it is 
almost a necessity. For his metaphysic, like every 
metaphysic, aims at embracing all reality; and as 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 115 

the relation between life and matter is an essential 
part of it, the matter with which he deals cannot be 
restricted to that which constitutes our negligible 
fraction of the physical world. 

But what, according to his metaphysic, is the 
relation of life, consciousness, in general, to matter 
in general? His theory of organic life cannot stand 
alone. For it does not get us beyond individual 
living things, struggling freely, but separately, with 
their own organisms, with each other, and with the 
inert mass of the physical world which lies around 
them. But what the history of all this may be, 
whence comes individual life, and whence comes 
matter, and what may be the fundamental relation 
between the two — this has still to be explained. 

And, frankly, the task of explanation for anyone 
less gifted than M. Bergson himself is not an easy 
one. The first stage, indeed, whether easy or not, 
is at least familiar. M. Bergson thinks, with other 
great masters of speculation, that consciousness, 
life, spirit is the prius of all that is, be it physical 
or mental. But let me repeat that the prius is, in 
his view, no all-inclusive absolute, of which our 
world, the world evolving in time, is but an aspect 
or phase. His theory, whatever its subsequent 
difficulties may be, is less remote from common- 
sense. For duration with him is, as we have seen, 
something pre-eminently real. It is not to be sep- 



116 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

arated from the creative consciousness. It is no 
abstract emptiness, filled up by successive happen- 
ings, placed (as it were) end to end. It must rather 
be regarded as an agent in that continuous process 
of free creation which is life itself. 

Since, then, consciousness and matter are not 
to be regarded as entities of independent origin, 
ranged against one another from eternity, like the 
good and evil principles of Zoroaster, what is the 
relation between them? If I understand M. Berg- 
son aright, matter must be regarded as a by-product 
of the evolutionary process. The primordial con- 
sciousness falls, as it were, asunder. On the one 
side it rises to an ever fuller measure of creative 
freedom ; on the other, it lapses into matter, deter- 
minism, mechanical adjustment, space. Space with 
him, therefore, is not, as with most other philoso- 
phers, a correlative of time. It has not the same 
rank (whatever that may be) in the hierarchy of 
being. For, while Time is of the essence of 
primordial activity, space is but the limiting term 
of those material elements which are no more than 
its backwash. 

I do not, of course, for a moment delude myself 
into the belief that I have made these high specu- 
lations clear and easy. The reader, justly incensed 
by my rendering of M. Bergson's doctrine, must 
find his remedy in M. Bergson's own admirable 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 117 

exposition. I may, however, have done enough to 
enable me to make intelligible certain difficulties 
which press upon me, and may, perhaps, press also 
upon others. 

in 

Hegel's imposing system professed to exhibit the 
necessary stages in the timeless evolution of the 
Idea. Has M. Bergson any corresponding inten- 
tion? The evolution, to be sure, with which he deals 
is not timeless; on the contrary, it is, as we have 
seen, most intimately welded to duration — a differ- 
ence of which I am the last to complain. This, 
however, taken by itself, need be no bar to explana- 
tion. But how if we take it in connection with his 
fundamental principle that creative evolution is 
essentially indeterminate and contingent? How 
can the movements of the indeterminate and the 
contingent be explained? I should myself have 
supposed the task impossible. But M. Bergson 
holds that events which, because they are contingent, 
even infinite powers of calculation could not fore- 
see, may yet be accounted for, even by our very 
modest powers of thought, after they have occurred. 
I own this somewhat surprises me. And my diffi- 
culty is increased by the reflection that free 
consciousness pursues no final end, it follows no 
predetermined design. It struggles, it expends 



118 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

itself in effort, it stretches ever towards completer 
freedom, but it has no plans. Now, when we are 
dealing with a fragment of this consciousness em- 
bodied in a human being, we regard ourselves as 
having "explained" his action when we have 
obtained a rough idea of his objects and of his 
opportunities. We know, of course, that our ex- 
planation must be imperfect ; we know ourselves to 
be ignorant of innumerable elements required for 
a full comprehension of the problem. But we are 
content with the best that can be got — and this 
"best," be it observed, is practically the same 
whether we believe in determinism or believe in free 
will. Of primordial consciousness, however, we 
know neither the objects nor the opportunities. It 
follows no designs, it obeys no laws. The sort of 
explanation, therefore, which satisfies us when we 
are dealing with one of its organic embodiments, 
seems hard of attainment in the case of primordial 
consciousness itself. I cannot, at least, persuade 
myself that M. Bergson has attained it. Why 
should free consciousness first produce, and then, as 
it were, shed, mechanically determined matter? 
Why, having done so, should it set to work to per- 
meate this same matter with contingency? Why 
should it allow itself to be split up by matter into 
separate individualities? Why, in short, should it 
ever have engaged in that long and doubtful battle 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 119 

between freedom and necessity which we call or- 
ganic evolution? 

It may be replied that these objections, or objec- 
tions of like pattern, may be urged against any 
cosmogony whatever; that the most successful 
philosophy cannot hope to smooth away all difficul- 
ties ; and that in metaphysics, as in other affairs, we 
must be content, not with the best we can imagine, 
but with the least imperfect we can obtain. To 
this modest programme I heartily subscribe. Yet 
fully granting that, in the present state of our 
knowledge, every metaphysic must be defective, we 
cannot accept any particular metaphysic without 
some grounds of belief, be they speculative, em- 
pirical, or practical; and the question therefore 
arises — On what grounds are we asked to accept the 
metaphysic of M. Bergson? 

This brings us to what is perhaps the most sug- 
gestive, and is certainly the most difficult, portion 
of his whole doctrine — I mean his theory of knowl- 
edge. The magnitude of that difficulty will be at 
once realised when I say that in M. Bergson's view 
not reason, but instinct, brings us into the closest 
touch, the directest relation, with what is most real 
in the Universe. For reason is at home, not with 
life and freedom, but with matter, mechanism, and 
space — the waste products of the creative impulse. 
We need not wonder, then, that reason should feel 



120 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

at home in the realm of matter ; that it should suc- 
cessfully cut up the undivided flow of material 
change into particular sequences which are re- 
peated, or are capable of repetition, and which 
exemplify "natural laws" ; that it should manipulate 
long trains of abstract mathematical inference, and 
find that their remotest conclusion fits closely to 
observed fact. For matter and reason own, accord- 
ing to M. Bergson, a common origin; and the second 
was evolved in order that we might cope successfully 
with the first. 

Instinct, which finds its greatest development 
among bees and ants, though incomparably inferior 
to reason in its range, is yet in touch with a higher 
order of truth, for it is in touch with life itself. 
In the perennial struggle between freedom and 
necessity which began when life first sought to in- 
troduce contingency into matter, everything, it 
seems, could not be carried along the same line of 
advance. Super-consciousness was like an army 
suddenly involved in a new and difficult country. 
If the infantry took one route, the artillery must 
travel by another. The powers of creation would 
have been overtasked had it been attempted to de- 
velop the instinct of the bee along the same evolu- 
tionary track as the reason of the man. But man 
is not, therefore, wholly without instinct, nor does 
he completely lack the powers of directly appre- 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 121 

hending life. In rare moments of tension, when his 
whole being is wound up for action, when memory 
seems fused with will and desire into a single 
impulse to do — then he knows freedom, then he 
touches reality, then he consciously sweeps along 
with the advancing wave of Time, which, as it 
moves, creates. 

However obscure to reflective thought such mys- 
tic utterances may seem, many will read them with 
a secret sympathy. But, from the point of view 
occupied by M. Bergson's own philosophy, do they 
not suggest questions of difficulty? How comes it 
that if instinct be the appropriate organ for appre- 
hending free reality, bees and ants, whose range of 
freedom is so small, should have so much of it? 
How comes it that man, the freest animal of them 
all, should specially delight himself in the exercise 
of reason, the faculty brought into existence to deal 
with matter and necessity? M. Bergson is quite 
aware of the paradox, but does he anywhere fully 
explain it? 

This is, however, comparatively speaking, a small 
matter. The difficulties which many will find in 
the system, as I have just described it, lie deeper. 
Their first inclination will be to regard it as a fan- 
tastic construction, in many parts difficult of com- 
prehension, in no part capable of proof. They 
will attach no evidential value to the unverified 



122 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

visions attributed to the Hymenoptera, and little 
to the flashes of illumination enjoyed by man. The 
whole scheme will seem to them arbitrary and un- 
real, owing more to poetical imagination than to 
scientific knowledge or philosophic insight. 

Such a judgment would certainly be wrong; and 
if made at all, will, I fear, be due in no small 
measure to my imperfect summary. The difficul- 
ties of such a summary are indeed very great, not 
through the defects but the merits of the author 
summarised. The original picture is so rich in sug- 
gestive detail that adequate reproduction on a 
smaller scale is barely possible. Moreover, M. 
Bergson's Evolution creatrice is not merely a 
philosophic treatise, it has all the charms and all the 
audacities of a work of art, and as such defies ade- 
quate reproduction. Yet let no man regard it as 
an unsubstantial vision. One of its peculiarities is 
the intimate and, at first sight, the singular min- 
gling of minute scientific statement with the boldest 
metaphysical speculation. This is not accidental; 
it is of the essence of M. Bergson's method. For 
his metaphysic may, in a sense, be called empirical. 
It is no a priori construction, any more than it is a 
branch of physics or biology. It is a philosophy, 
but a philosophy which never wearies in its appeals 
to concrete science. 

If, for example, you ask why M. Bergson sup- 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 123 

poses a common super-physical source for the 
diverging lines of organic evolution, he would say 
that, with all their differences, they showed occa- 
sional similarities of development not otherwise to 
be explained; and in proof he would compare the 
eye of the man with the eye of the mollusc. If, 
again, you asked him why, after crediting this com- 
mon source of organic life with consciousness and 
will, he refuses it purpose, he would reply that evo- 
lution showed the presence of "drive," "impulse," 
creative "effort," but no plan of operations, and 
many failures. If you asked him why he supposed 
that matter as well as life was due to primordial 
consciousness, he would say (as we have seen) that 
in no other manner can you account for the ease 
and success with which reason measures, classifies, 
and calculates when it is dealing with the material 
world. Plainly this pre-established harmony is best 
accounted for by a common origin. 

It must be owned that in M. Bergson's dex- 
terous hands this form of argument from the pres- 
ent to the past is almost too supple. Whether 
diverging lines of development show unlooked-for 
similarities or puzzling discords is all one to him. 
Either event finds him ready. In the first case the 
phenomenon is simply accounted for by community 
of origin; in the second case it is accounted for — 
less simply — by his doctrine that each particular 



124 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

evolutionary road is easily overcrowded, and that 
if creative will insists on using it, something must 
be dropped by the way. 

Even the most abstruse and subtle parts of his 
system make appeal to natural science. Consider, 
for example, the sharp distinction which he draws 
between the operations of mechanism and reason 
on the one side, creation and instinct on the other. 
Reason, analysing some very complex organ like 
the eye and its complementary nervous structure, 
perceives that it is compounded of innumerable 
minute elements, each of which requires the nicest 
adjustment if it is to serve its purpose, and all of 
which are mutually interdependent. It tries to 
imagine external and mechanical methods by which 
this intricate puzzle could have been put together 
— e.g. selection out of chance variations. In M. 
Bergson's opinion, all such theories — true, no 
doubt, as far as they go — are inadequate. He sup- 
plements or replaces them by quite a different view. 
From the external and mechanical standpoint 
necessarily adopted by reason, the complexity 
seems infinite, the task of co-ordination impossible. 
But looked at from the inside, from the position 
which creation occupies and instinct comprehends, 
there is no such complexity and no such difficulty. 
Observe how certain kinds of wasp, when para- 
lysing their victim, show a knowledge of anatomy 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 125 

which no morphologist could surpass, and a skill 
which few surgeons could equal. Are we to sup- 
pose these dexterities to be the result of innumer- 
able experiments somehow bred into the race ? Are 
we to suppose it the result, e.g. of natural selec- 
tion working upon minute variation? Or are we 
to suppose it due to some important heritable muta- 
tion? No, says M. Bergson; none of these explan- 
ations, nor any like them, are admissible. If the 
problem was one of mechanism, if it were as com- 
plicated as reason, contemplating it from without, 
necessarily supposes, then it would be insoluble. 
But to the wasp it is not insoluble; for the wasp 
looks at it from within, and is in touch, through 
instinct, with life itself. 

This enumeration is far from exhausting the 
biological arguments which M. Bergson draws from 
his ample stores in favour of his views on the be- 
ginnings of organic life. Yet I cannot feel sure 
that even he succeeds in quarrying out of natural 
science foundations strong enough to support the 
full weight of his metaphysic. Even if it be granted 
(and by naturalistic thinkers it will not be granted) 
that life always carries with it a trace of freedom 
or contingency, and that this grows greater as 
organisms develop, why should we therefore 
suppose that life existed before its first humble 
beginnings on this earth, why should we call in 



126 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

super-consciousness? M. Bergson regards matter 
as the dam which keeps back the rush of life. 
Organise it a little (as in the Protozoa) — i.e. 
slightly raise the sluice — and a little life will 
squeeze through. Organise it elaborately (as in 
man) — i.e. raise the sluice a good deal — and much 
life will squeeze through. Now this may be a very 
plausible opinion if the flood of life be really there, 
beating against matter till it forces an entry 
through the narrow slit of undifferentiated proto- 
plasm. But is it there? Science, modestly profess- 
ing ignorance, can stumble along without it; and I 
question whether philosophy, with only scientific 
data to work upon, can establish its reality. 

In truth, when we consider the manner in which 
M. Bergson uses his science to support his meta- 
physic, we are reminded of the familiar theistic 
argument from design, save that most of the design 
is left out. Theologians were wont to point to the 
marvellous adjustments with which the organic 
world abounds, and ask whether such intelligent 
contrivances did not compel belief in an intelligent 
contriver. The argument evidently proceeds on the 
principle that when all imaginable physical ex- 
planations fail, appeal may properly be made to an 
explanation which is metaphysical. Now, I do not 
say that this is either bad logic or bad philosophy; 
but I do say that it supplies no solid or immutable 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 127 

basis for a metaphysic. Particular applications of 
it are always at the mercy of new scientific dis- 
covery. Applications of the greatest possible 
plausibility were, as we all know, made meaningless 
by Darwin's discovery. Adaptations which seemed 
to supply conclusive proofs of design were found 
to be explicable, at least in the first instance, by 
natural selection. What has happened before may 
happen again. The apparently inexplicable may 
find an explanation within the narrowest limits of 
natural science. Mechanism may be equal to play- 
ing the part which a spiritual philosophy had 
assigned to consciousness. When, therefore, M. 
Bergson tells us that the appearance of an organ so 
peculiar as the eye in lines of evolution so widely 
separated as the molluscs and the vertebrates im- 
plies not only a common ancestral origin, but a 
common pre-ancestral origin ; or when he points out 
how hard it is to account for certain most compli- 
cated cases of adaptation by any known theory of 
heredity, we may admit the difficulty, yet hesitate 
to accept the solution. We feel the peril of basing 
our beliefs upon a kind of ignorance which may at 
any moment be diminished or removed. 

Now, I do not suggest that M. Bergson's system, 
looked at as a whole, suffers from this kind of weak- 
ness. On the contrary, I think that if the implica- 
tions of his system be carefully studied, it will be 



128 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

seen that he draws support from sources of a very 
different kind, and in particular from two which 
must be drawn upon (as I think) if the inadequacy 
of naturalism is to be fully revealed. 

The first is the theory of knowledge. If natu- 
ralism be accepted, then our whole apparatus for 
arriving at truth, all the beliefs in which that truth 
is embodied, reason, instinct, and their legitimate 
results, are the product of irrational forces. If 
they are the product of irrational forces, whence 
comes their authority? If to this it be replied that 
the principles of evolution, which naturalism ac- 
cepts from science, would tend to produce faculties 
adapted to the discovery of truth, I reply, in the 
first place, that this is no solution of the difficulty, 
and wholly fails to extricate us from the logical 
circle. I reply, in the second place, that the only 
faculties which evolution, acting through natural 
selection, would tend to produce, are those which 
enable individuals, or herds, or societies to survive. 
Speculative capacity — the capacity, for example, to 
frame a naturalistic theory of the universe — if we 
have it at all, must be a by-product. What nature 
is really concerned with is that we should eat, breed, 
and bring up our young. The rest is accident. 

Now M. Bergson does not directly interest him- 
self in this negative argument, on which I have 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 129 

dwelt elsewhere. 1 But I think his whole construc- 
tive theory of reason and instinct is really based on 
the impossibility of accepting blind mechanism as 
the source — the efficient cause — of all our knowl- 
edge of reality. His theory is difficult. I am not 
sure that I am competent either to explain or to 
criticise it. But it seems to me clear that, great as 
is the wealth of scientific detail with which it is 
illustrated and enforced, its foundations lie far 
deeper than the natural sciences can dig. 

But it is not only in his theory of knowledge that 
he shows himself to be moved by considerations 
with which science has nothing to do. Though the 
point is not explicitly pressed, it is plain that he 
takes account of "values," and is content with no 
philosophy which wholly ignores them. Were it 
otherwise, could he speak as he does of "freedom," 
of "creative will," of the "joy" (as distinguished 
from the pleasure) which fittingly accompanies it? 
Could he represent the universe as the battle- 
ground between the opposing forces of freedom 
and necessity? Could he look on matter as "the 
enemy"? Could he regard mechanism, deter- 
minateness, all that matter stands for, as not merely 
in process of subjugation, but as things that ought 
to be subdued by the penetrating energies of free 
consciousness ? 

1 For example, in Foundations of Belief. 



130 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

This quasi-ethical ideal is infinitely removed from 
pure naturalism. It is almost as far removed from 
any ideal which could be manufactured out of 
empirical science alone, even granting what natu- 
ralism refuses to grant, that organised life exhibits 
traces of contingency. M. Bergson, if I correctly 
read his mind, refuses — I think rightly refuses — to 
tolerate conceptions so ruinous to "values" as these 
must inevitably prove. But can his own conception 
of the universe stand where he has placed it? By 
introducing creative will behind development, he 
has no doubt profoundly modified the whole evo- 
lutionary drama. Matter and mechanism have lost 
their pride of place. Consciousness has replaced 
them. The change seems great; nay, it is great. 
But if things remain exactly where M. Bergson 
leaves them, is the substantial difference so impor- 
tant as we might at first suppose? What is it that 
consciousness strives for? What does it accom- 
plish? It strives to penetrate matter with contin- 
gency. Why, I do not know. But concede the 
worth of the enterprise. What measure of success 
can it possibly attain? A certain number of organic 
molecules develop into more or less plastic instru- 
ments of consciousness and will; consciousness and 
will, thus armed, inflict a few trifling scratches on 
the outer crust of our world, and perhaps of worlds 
elsewhere, but the huge mass of matter remains 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 181 

and must remain what it has always been — the un- 
disputed realm of lifeless determinism. Freedom, 
when all has happened that can happen, creeps 
humbly on its fringe. 

I suggest, with great respect, that in so far as 
M. Bergson has devised his imposing scheme of 
metaphysic in order to avoid the impotent conclu- 
sions of naturalism, he has done well. As the 
reader knows, I most earnestly insist that no phi- 
losophy can at present be other than provisional; 
and that, in framing a provisional philosophy, 
"values" may be, and must be, taken into account. 
My complaint, if I have one, is not that M. Berg- 
son goes too far in this direction, but that he does 
not go far enough. He somewhat mars his scheme 
by what is, from this point of view, too hesitating 
and uncertain a treatment. 

It is true that he has left naturalism far behind. 
His theory of a primordial super-consciousness, not 
less than his theory of freedom, separates him from 
this school of thought as decisively as his theory 
of duration, with its corollary of an ever-growing 
and developing reality, divides him from the great 
idealists. It is true also that, according to my view, 
his metaphysic is religious : since I deem the impor- 
tant philosophic distinction between religious and 
non-religious metaphysic to be that God, or what- 
ever in the system corresponds to God, does in the 



132 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

former take sides in a moving drama, while, with 
more consistency, but far less truth, he is, in the 
non-religious metaphysic, represented as indiffer- 
ently related to all the multiplicity of which he con- 
stitutes the unity. 1 

Now, as M. Bergson's super-consciousness does 
certainly take sides, and, as we have seen, his sys- 
tem suffers to the full from the familiar difficulty 
to which, in one shape or another, all religious 
systems (as defined) are liable, namely, that the 
evils or the defects against which the Creator is 
waging war are evils and defects in a world of his 
own creating. But as M. Bergson has gone thus 
far in opposition both to naturalistic and to meta- 
physical orthodoxies, would not his scheme gain if 
he went yet further? Are there no other "values" 
which he would do well to consider? His super- 
consciousness has already some quasi-gesthetic and 
quasi-moral qualities. We must attribute to it joy 
in full creative effort, and a corresponding aliena- 
tion from those branches of the evolutionary stem 

1 This view, at greater length and therefore with much less 
crudity, is expounded in Foundations of Belief, p. 308. Since 
writing this portion of the text I have seen Professor William 
James' posthumous volume, where an opposite opinion seems 
to be expressed. I do not think, however, that our disagree- 
ment is substantial. I think he means no more than I myself 
indicated earlier in this article. Let me add, that the last 
opinion I desire to express is that absolute idealists are not 
religious. 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 133 

which, preferring ease to risk and effort, have 
remained stationary, or even descended in the 
organic scale. It may be that other values are diffi- 
cult to include in his scheme, especially if he too 
rigorously banishes teleology. But why should he 
banish teleology? In his philosophy super-con- 
sciousness is so indeterminate that it is not per- 
mitted to hamper itself with any purpose more 
definite than that of self-augmentation. It is 
ignorant not only of its course, but of its goal ; and 
for the sufficient reason that, in M. Bergson's view, 
these things are not only unknown, but unknow- 
able. But is there not a certain incongruity be- 
tween the substance of such a philosophy and the 
sentiments associated with it by its author? Crea- 
tion, freedom, will — these doubtless are great 
things ; but we cannot lastingly admire them unless 
we know their drift. We cannot, I submit, rest 
satisfied with what differs so little from the hap- 
hazard; joy is no fitting consequence of efforts 
which are so nearly aimless. If values are to be 
taken into account, it is surely better to invoke God 
with a purpose, than super-consciousness with none. 
Yet these deficiencies, if deficiencies they be, do 
little to diminish the debt of gratitude we owe to 
M. Bergson. Apart altogether from his admirable 
criticisms, his psychological insight, his charms of 
style, there is permanent value in his theories. And 



134 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 

those who, like myself, find little satisfaction in the 
all-inclusive unification of the idealist systems ; who 
cannot, either on rational or any other grounds, 
accept naturalism as a creed, will always turn with 
interest and admiration to this brilliant experiment 
in philosophic construction, so far removed from 
both. 



PART ONE: SPECULATIVE 
IV: FRANCIS BACON 



IV 

FRANCIS BACON * 

From the very moment at which I rashly agreed 
to take a leading part in this ceremony I have been 
occupied in repenting my own temerity. For, in- 
deed, the task which the members of the Honour- 
able Society have thrown upon me is one which I 
feel very ill qualified to perform ; one, indeed, which 
has some aspects with which many present here 
to-day are far more fitted to deal than I. 

For the great man whose introduction into 
Gray's Inn some three hundred years ago we have 
to-day met to commemorate was a member of this 
Society through his whole adult life. Here he 
lived before he rose to the highest legal posi- 
tion in the country ; here, after his fall, he returned 
to his old friends and dwelt again among his earlier 
surroundings. It was to this Inn that he gave some 
of his most loving work, adorning it, regulating 
it, and taking a large share both in its pleasures 
and its business. It would seem, therefore, to be 

1 Speech delivered at the unveiling of the memorial to Lord 
Bacon in the gardens of Gray's Inn, June 27, 1912. 

137 



138 FRANCIS BACON 

fitting that the man who unveils the memorial of 
this distinguished member of Gray's Inn should 
himself be a member of Gray's Inn, and that a man 
who speaks in praise of a Lord Chancellor should 
himself know something of law. 

I possess, alas! neither of these qualifications. 
But I am told by those who are more competent 
than I to form a judgment on the subject, that 
Bacon showed, as we might expect, great mastery 
of legal principles, and that although he did not 
equal in learning that eminently disagreeable per- 
sonage, Sir Edward Coke, yet that his views upon 
law reform were far in advance of his time, and, 
according to some authorities, had even an effect 
upon that masterpiece of codification, the Code 
Napoleon. 

However this may be, I clearly have no title to 
say, and do not mean to say, a single word of my 
own upon Bacon as a lawyer. Upon Bacon as a 
politician it would not be difficult, and it might be 
interesting, to dilate. Although I think he lacked 
that personal force which is a necessary element in 
the equipment of every successful public man, he 
yet possessed a breadth of view, a moderation of 
spirit, which, had his advice been taken, might have 
altered the history of this country, and even of 
Europe. It might be an attractive task for those 
who like drawing imaginary pictures of the his 



FRANCIS BACON 139 

torical "might-have-been," to conceive a man of 
Bacon's insight inspiring the policy of a sovereign 
who had the power and the wish to act upon his 
advice. Had such a combination existed at the be- 
ginning of the seventeenth century we might well 
have seen a development of parliamentary and con- 
stitutional institutions effected at a less cost than 
civil war; and all the bitterness of political and 
religious strife, which so greatly hindered our 
progress at home and so effectually destroyed our 
influence abroad, might happily have been avoided. 
But all this is a dream — a dream that could never 
have come true under a sovereign like James I. 
Am I then to turn from the part which under 
happier circumstances Bacon might have played in 
public affairs, and discuss the part which in fact he 
did play? I confess that the subject does not 
attract me. Anybody who goes to the study of 
Bacon's life, remembering how his fame has been 
darkened by the satire of Pope and the rhetoric of 
Macaulay, must naturally desire to find that these 
great writers have grossly exaggerated the shadows 
upon their hero's character. And, indeed, they 
have exaggerated. Bacon was not a bad man. He 
was not a cruel man. I believe he loved justice. 
I am sure he loved good government. And yet, 
though all this be true, I do not think his admirers 
can draw much satisfaction from any impartial 



140 FRANCIS BACON 

survey of his relations either with his family, his 
friends, his political associates or his political rivals. 
Much worse men than Bacon have had more inter- 
esting characters. They may have committed 
crimes, both in public and in private life, from which 
Bacon would have shrunk in horror. But though 
we condemn them, we are interested in them. I do 
not think we ever feel any interest in Bacon the 
politician. Neither his relations with Essex, nor 
with Salisbury, nor with Buckingham, nor with 
Queen Elizabeth, nor with James I, put him, how- 
ever we look at the matter, in a very attractive 
light. He had not a high courage. I doubt his 
capacity for uncalculating generosity. I could 
have wished him a little more pride. I suspect, in- 
deed, that his deficiencies in these respects militated 
even against his worldly fortunes. Such men are 
used in public life, but, as a rule, they are neither 
greatly loved nor greatly trusted. 

But do not let us talk of Bacon as though his 
career were a great tragedy. It was nothing of 
the sort. He was a philosopher and he was a 
statesman; and in the age in which he lived there 
were no two professions which promised the cer- 
tainty of a more uneasy life or the chance of a more 
disagreeable death. His first patron, Essex, died 
on the scaffold. His second patron, Buckingham, 
was stabbed by Felton; and if you turn from 



FRANCIS BACON 141 

statesmen to philosophers, how restless was the 
life of Descartes, how unhappy the career of 
Galileo, how tragic the end of Giordano Bruno! 
Now, these were Bacon's contemporaries — these 
were the politicians with whom he was most 
closely connected and the philosophers who made 
his age illustrious. How much more fortunate was 
his career than theirs! He had not to flee from 
place to place for fear of persecution, like Des- 
cartes. He suffered no long imprisonment, like 
Galileo. He was never threatened with the execu- 
tioner's axe, or the assassin's dagger. Nor did he 
go to the stake, like Bruno. And however low some 
may rate hereditary honours, everybody will, I 
think, admit that it is better to be made a viscount 
than to be burnt. 

If I now pass from those aspects of Bacon's 
life with which, for one reason or another, I am 
either unqualified or unwilling to deal, I am com- 
pelled by a process of exhaustion to consider Bacon 
as a man of letters, an historian, and a philosopher. 
He was all three — a writer of the most noble prose, 
a man richly endowed with the qualities that make 
an historian, a philosopher whose advent marked 
the beginning of a great epoch. As a philosopher 
his fate has been mixed. He has been magnificent- 
ly praised, both in this country and abroad, by men 
whose praise is worth much; he has been violently 



142 FRANCIS BACON 

abused by men whose abuse cannot be lightly thrust 
aside; and* — worst fate of all — his achievements 
have been vulgarised by some of his most ardent ad- 
mirers. I do not think this is the occasion on which 
it would be fitting to attempt a full and balanced 
judgment on the precise position which Bacon oc- 
cupies in the history of European philosophy. He 
has been regarded both by enemies and by friends 
as the father of that great empirical school of which 
we in this country have produced perhaps the most 
illustrious members, though it flourished splendidly 
in France during the eighteenth century. If this 
claim be good (I am not sure that it is) Bacon's 
philosophic position is, for that reason if for no 
other, a proud one. For whatever we may think 
of Locke and his successors, the mark they have 
made on the course of speculation can never be 
effaced. 

I do not, however, propose to deal with these 
niceties of philosophic history. I shall probably 
better meet your wishes if I try to say in a very few 
words what I think was the real nature of the debt 
which the world owes to Bacon; and why it is that, 
amid universal approval, we are met here to-day 
to pay this tribute to his memory. 

We shall make (I think) a great mistake if we 
try to prove that Bacon was, what he always said 
he was not, a maker of systems. He had neither 



FRANCIS BACON 143 

the desire, nor I believe the gifts, which would have 
qualified him to be the architect of one of those 
great speculative systems which exist for the won- 
der, and perhaps for the instruction, of mankind. 
But if he was not a system-maker, what was he? 
He was a prophet and a seer. No doubt he aimed 
at more. He spent much time in attacking his 
philosophical predecessors, and took endless 
trouble with the details of his inductive method. 
Of his criticisms it is easy to say, and true, that 
they were often violent and not always fair. Of his 
inductive logic it is easy to say, and true, that he 
did not produce, as he hoped, an instrument of dis- 
covery so happily contrived that even mediocrity 
could work wonders by the use of it. It is also true 
that he overrated its coherence and its cogency. 
But this is a small matter. I do not believe that 
formal logic has ever made a reasoner nor induc- 
tive logic a discoverer. And however highly we 
rate Bacon as an inductive logician, and the fore- 
runner of recent thinkers who have developed and 
perfected the inductive theory, it is not as the 
inventor of an investigating machine that Bacon 
lives in our grateful memory. 

It is, however, quite as easy to underrate as to 
overrate Bacon's contribution to the theory of dis- 
covery. There are critics who suppose him guilty 
of believing that by the mere accumulation of 



1U FRANCIS BACON 

observed facts the secrets of Nature can be un- 
locked; that the exercise of the imagination with- 
out which you can no more make new science than 
you can make new poetry, is useless or dangerous, 
and that hypothesis is no legitimate aid to experi- 
mental investigation. 

I believe these to be grave errors. I do not 
think that anybody who really tries to make out 
what Bacon meant by his Prerogative Instances 
and his Analogies will either deny that he believed 
in the unity of Nature, and in our power of co- 
ordinating its multitudinous details, or will sup- 
pose that he underrated the helps which the imag- 
ination, and only the imagination, can give to him 
who is absorbed in the great task. 

I return from this digression on Baconian 
method to the larger question on which we were 
engaged. I called Bacon a seer. What, then, was 
it that he saw? What he saw in the first place were 
the evil results which followed on the disdainful 
refusal of philosophers to adopt the patient attitude 
which befits those who come to nature, to leara 
from her all that she has to teach. Bacon is never 
tired of telling us that the kingdom of nature, like 
the Kingdom of God, can only be entered by those 
who approach it in the spirit of a child. And there, 
surely, he was right. There, surely, his eloquence 
and his authority did much to correct the insolent 



FRANCIS BACON 145 

futility of those verbal disputants who thought they 
could impose upon nature their crude and hasty 
theories born of unsifted observations, interpreted 
by an unbridled fancy. 

I do not mean to trouble you with many extracts. 
But there is one which so vividly represents Bacon, 
at least as I see him, that I believe you will thank 
me for reading it to you. 

"Train yourselves," he says, "to understand the 
real subtlety of things, and you will learn to despise 
the fictitious and disputatious subtleties of words, 
and freeing yourselves from such follies, you will 
give yourselves to the task of facilitating — under 
the auspices of divine compassion — the lawful wed- 
lock between the mind and nature. Be not like 
the empirie ant, which merely collects ; nor like the 
cobweb-weaving theorists, who do but spin webs 
from their own intestines; but imitate the bees, 
which both collect and fashion. Against the 
'Nought-beyond' and the ancients, raise your cry 
of 'More-beyond.' When they speak of the 'Not- 
imitable-thunderbolt' let us reply that the thunder- 
bolt is imitable. Let the discovery of the new ter- 
restrial world encourage you to expect the dis- 
covery of a new intellectual world. The fate of 
Alexander the Great will be ours. The conquests 
which his contemporaries thought marvellous, and 
likely to surpass the belief of posterity, were 



146 FRANCIS BACON 

described by later writers as nothing more than the 
natural successes of one who justly dared to despise 
imaginary perils. Even so, our triumph (for we 
shall triumph) will be lightly esteemed by those 
who come after us; justly, when they compare our 
trifling gains with theirs; unjustly, if they attribute 
our victory to audacity rather than to humility, and 
to freedom from that fatal human pride which has 
lost us everything, and has hallowed the fluttering 
fancies of men, in place of the imprint stamped 
upon things by the Divine seal." 

There surely speaks the seer. There you have 
expressed in burning words the vehement faith 
which makes Bacon the passionate philosopher so 
singular a contrast to Bacon the cold and somewhat 
poor-spirited politician. There is the vision of 
man's conquest over nature, seen in its fullness by 
none before him, and not perhaps by many since. 
There is recognised with proud humility the little 
that one individual and one generation can accom- 
plish, the splendour of the results which man's 
accumulated labours will secure. 

It is no doubt easy to praise this ideal vulgarly, 
as it is easy to belittle it stupidly. It can be made 
to seem as if the Baconian ideal was to add some- 
thing to the material conveniences of life, and to 
ignore the aspirations of the intellect. But this is 
a profound error. It is true that (to use his own 



FRANCIS BACON 147 

phrase) he looked with "pity on the estate of man." 
It is true that he saw in science a powerful instru- 
ment for raising it. But he put his trust in no 
petty device for attaining that great end. He had 
no faith in the chance harvests of empirical dis- 
covery. His was not an imagination that crawled 
upon the ground, that shrank from wide horizons, 
that could not look up to Heaven. He saw, as 
none had seen before, that if you would effectually 
subdue Nature to your ends, you must master her 
laws. You must laboriously climb to a knowledge 
of great principles before you can descend to their 
practical employment. There must be pure science 
before there is applied science. And though these 
may now appear truisms, in Bacon's time they were 
the intuitions of genius made long before the event. 
I should like to ask those more competent than 
myself to determine the period when this prophecy 
of Bacon began in any large measure to be accom- 
plished. I believe myself it will be found that only 
recently, say within the last three or four genera- 
tions, has industrial invention been greatly pro- 
moted by industrial research. Great discoveries 
were made by Bacon's contemporaries, by his 
immediate successors, and by men of science in 
every generation which has followed. But the 
effective application of pure knowledge to the aug- 
mentation of man's power over nature is of com- 



148 FRANCIS BACON 

paratively recent growth. You may find early 
examples here and there; but, broadly speaking, the 
effect which science has had and is now having, and 
in increasing measure is predestined to have, upon 
the fortunes of mankind, did not declare itself by 
unmistakable signs until a century and a half or 
two centuries had passed since the death of the 
great man who so eloquently proclaimed the 
approach of the new age. 

You may say to me — Grant that all this is true, 
grant that Bacon, in Cowley's famous metaphor, 
looked from Pisgah over the Promised Land, but 
did not enter therein; or, in his own words, that 
he sounded the clarion, but joined not in the battle 
— what then? Did he do anything for science ex- 
cept make phrases about it? Are we after all so 
greatly in his debt? I answer that he created, or 
greatly helped to create, the atmosphere in which 
scientific discovery flourishes. If you consider how 
slightly science was in his day esteemed; if you 
remember the fears of the orthodox, the contempt 
of the learned, the indifference of the powerful, the 
ignorance of the many, you will perhaps agree that 
no greater work could be performed in its interest 
than that to which Bacon set his hand. "He en- 
tered not the promised land." True; but was it 
nothing to proclaim in the hearing of a generation 
wandering in the desert that there is a promised 



FRANCIS BACON 149 

land? "He joined not in the battle." True; but 
was it nothing to blow so loud a call that the notes 
of his clarion are still ringing in our ears? Let us 
not be ungrateful. 

This is a theme on which much more could be 
said, but I am sure that this is not the time to say 
it. There was a magnificent compliment paid to 
Bacon's eloquence by Ben Jonson — a compliment 
so magnificent that, in my private conviction, 
neither Bacon nor any other speaker has ever de- 
served it. The poet alleges that the chief anxiety 
of those who heard the orator was lest his oratory 
should come to an end. This is not praise which 
in these degenerate days any of us are likely to 
deserve. But we need not rush into the other 
extreme : we heed not compel our audience to forget 
all else in their desire that we should bring our 
discourse to a speedy conclusion. That trial, at all 
events, I hope to spare you. I will not therefore 
dwell, as I partly intended, on such tempting sub- 
jects as the criticisms passed on Bacon, and I may 
add, on Bacon's countrymen, by a great meta- 
physician of the last century. It may be enough 
to say that if Hegel thought little of Bacon, Bacon, 
had he known Hegel, would assuredly have re- 
turned the compliment. He would have regarded 
him as exhibiting the most perfect example of what 
he most detested in a thinker — the inteilectus sibi 



150 FRANCIS BACON 

permisms. Assuredly these great men were not 
made to understand each other; though for us the 
very magnitude of their differences, by making 
them incomparable, may allow us (if we can) to 
admire both. However this may be, I shall have 
played my part if I have succeeded in showing 
reason why all who love science for its own sake, 
all who "looking with pity on the estate of man" 
believe that in science is to be found the most 
powerful engine for its material improvement, 
should join with this old and famous Society in 
doing honour to the greatest among its members. 



PART ONE: SPECULATIVE 
V: PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 



Ni 

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH l 

In accordance with precedent, I have to begin 
my observations to you by calling to your recollec- 
tion the melancholy fact that since our last meet- 
ing we have lost a most distinguished member of 
our body — who by the lustre of his name added 
dignity to our proceedings, and who might, had 
his life been spared, have greatly promoted the 
success of our investigations — I allude to Professor 
Hertz. As those of you will know who have had 
the opportunity of following recent developments 
of physical science, he was the fortunate individual 
who demonstrated experimentally the identity of 
light and of certain electro-magnetic phenomena. 
This identity had been divined, and elaborated on 
the side of theory, by one of the greatest of British 
men of science, Clerk Maxwell, but the theory had 
never been verified until Professor Hertz, about 
five years ago, startled Europe by the experi- 
mental identification of these physical forces. The 

1 Presidential Address to the Society for Psychical Research, 
1894. 

153 



154 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

extraordinary interest and the far-reaching im- 
portance of a discovery like this * will not perhaps 
be appreciated by every one of my audience, but 
all of those who take an interest in such subjects 
will see that by this stroke of genius a very large 
stride has been made towards establishing the unity 
of the great natural powers. 

The mention of a physical discovery like this, 
made by one of ourselves, naturally suggests reflec- 
tions as to our actual scientific position. What, 
we feel tempted to ask, do such results as we have 
arrived at bear to the general view which science 
has hitherto taken of that material universe in which 
we live? I must confess that, when I call to mind 
the history of these relations in the past, the record 
is not one on which at first sight we can dwell with 
any great satisfaction. Consider, for example, the 
attitude maintained by the great body of scientific 
opinion towards the phenomena which used to be 
known as mesmeric, but which have now been re- 
baptised, with Braid's term, hypnotic. As most of 
you are aware, it is little more than a century since 
the public attention of Europe was called to these 
extraordinary facts by the discoveries, or redis- 
coveries, of Mesmer. Mesmer produced hypnotic 
phenomena of a kind now familiar to everybody, 

1 Written, of course, before the modern development of 
wireless telegraphy. 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 155 

and, not content with that, he invented a theory to 
account for them. The theory is an extremely bad 
one, and, I imagine, has fallen into the disrepute 
which it deserves ; for Mesmer committed the error, 
not unfamiliar in the history of speculation — the 
error, I mean, of supposing that an effect has been 
explained when a name has been given to its un- 
known cause. He declared that there was a kind 
of magnetic fluid to the operations of which the 
results that he obtained were due; and he un- 
doubtedly did his reputation much disservice in 
the minds of the scientific experts by associating 
his discoveries with fancies which neither at the 
time nor since could stand the test of critical in- 
vestigation. Nevertheless, the facts that Mesmer 
brought forward could be proved in the last cen- 
tury, as they can be proved now, by experimental 
evidence of the most conclusive character. It 
could be shown that they are neither the result of 
deliberate fraud nor of unconscious deception; 
and, accordingly, there was here a problem pre- 
sented for solution which it was plainly the duty 
of men of science to examine; to explain if they 
could, but under no circumstances to explain away. 
Their actual procedure was very different. There 
were, indeed, a good many doctors and other men 
of science who could not refuse the evidence of 
their senses, and who loudly testified to the truth, 



156 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

the interest, and the importance of the phenomena 
which they witnessed. But if you take the body of 
opinion of men of science generally, you will be 
driven to the conclusion that they either denied 
facts which were obviously true, or that they thrust 
them aside without condescending to submit them 
to serious investigation. There were, I believe, no 
less than two or three Commissions of inquiry — 
three, I think — instituted in France alone, one in 
Mesmer's lifetime, and the other two, unless my 
memory deceives me, after his death. The evidence 
thus collected by some of the most eminent 
scientific men in France, should have been enough 
to call the attention of all Europe to the new prob- 
lems thus raised. But it lay unnoticed or dis- 
believed until by a gradual process of rediscovery, 
by a constant and up-hill fight on the part of the 
less prejudiced members of the community, the 
truths of hypnotism, as far as they are yet attained, 
have reached something like general recognition. 
Even now, perhaps, their full importance — 
whether from a therapeutic or a psychological 
point of view — has not been sufficiently ac- 
knowledged. 

Such, put very briefly, is the history of the 
relations between science and one small section of 
the alleged phenomena which fall outside the 
ordinary range of scientific investigation. If we 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 157 

considered it by itself, we should be tempted to say 
that scientific men have shown in this connection a 
bigoted intolerance, a contemptuous indifference to 
scientific evidence, which, on the face of it, is wholly 
without excuse. I, however, do not feel inclined 
to acquiesce in so harsh a verdict. Hard as it may 
seem to justify their course, there was in it a great 
deal more of practical wisdom than might appear 
at first sight. I have always been impressed by a 
lesson which (as I think) is taught us by the gen- 
eral course of history, that you cannot expect, 
either of any single age or of any single nation or 
of any single profession, that it will carry out im- 
portant original work simultaneously over the 
whole field open to its explorations. If they would 
march far, they must march on a narrow front. 
If they insist on diffusing their energies over too 
wide a surface, their labours will be barren. Now 
just consider what it is that men of science have 
done in the century which has elapsed since the first 
French Commission investigated Mesmer's dis- 
coveries. I do not believe it would be going too far 
to say that the whole body of the sciences, with the 
exception of mechanics, has been reconstructed 
from top to bottom. Our leading ideas in chem- 
istry, our leading ideas in physics, the great gen- 
eralisations connected with the conservation and 
dissipation of energy, the theories of light, 



158 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

electricity, and sound, the whole of geology, every 
fruitful theory of organic evolution, were born in 
the hundred years which have elapsed since first 
Mesmer made hypnotic phenomena notorious 
through Europe. I think, if scientific men, taxed 
with their most unscientific treatment of this sub- 
ject, choose to say that, in harmony with a certain 
general conception of the natural world, they were 
laying deep the foundations of the vast and im- 
posing fabric of modern science, I for one should 
accept the plea as a bar to further proceedings. 
For the men who did that great work could 
scarcely have succeeded had they not rigidly con- 
fined themselves to one particular aspect of the 
universe with which they had to deal. Had they 
insisted en including in their survey not merely the 
well-travelled regions of everyday experience, but 
the dark and doubtful territories within which our 
labours lie, their work would have been worse, not 
better; less, not more, complete. They may have 
been narrow; but their narrowness has been our 
gain. They may have been prejudiced; but their 
prejudices have been fruitful, and we have reaped 
the harvest. When surveying the history of hu- 
man speculation, we find some individual who has 
with more or less success anticipated the dis- 
coveries of a later age, but has neither himself been 
able to develop them nor yet to interest his con- 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 159 

temporaries in their development, we are very apt 
to bestow on him an undue measure of gratitude. 
"Here," we say, "was a man before his time. Here 
was a man of whom his age was not worthy." Yet, 
in fact, he has done little to promote the growth of 
knowledge. There is no use in being before one's 
time after such a fashion as this. If neither he 
nor those to whom he spoke could make use of the 
message thus prematurely delivered, never under- 
stood and immediately forgotten, then, so far as 
science is concerned, he might without loss to the 
world have remained obstinately mute. To 
posterity he will be interesting, but hardly useful. 
He will earn their admiration, without otherwise 
deserving any large measure of their thanks. 

This, however, is merely a parenthetical reflec- 
tion, which, after all, has little to do with the gen- 
eral drift of the argument that I desire to lay 
before you. The question I wish you to consider 
is this: admitting that men of science had, if not 
a theoretical excuse, still a practical justification, 
for the course they have commonly adopted in re- 
gard to these obscure psychical phonemena, is that 
justification still valid? For myself, I think it is 
not. I think the time has now come when, in all 
our interests, the leaders of scientific thought should 
recognise that there are well-attested facts which 
cannot be any longer ignored merely because they 



160 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

do not easily fit into the familiar framework of the 
sciences. They certainly call for explanation; and 
science, if true to itself, should examine them with 
an open mind. 

I am, of course, aware that our experimental 
work is hampered by difficulties undreamed of in 
ordinary laboratories ; they are of a kind unfamiliar 
to scientific men, and not unnaturally rouse in their 
minds both dislike and suspicion. To begin with, 
they must be on their guard against self-deception, 
and sometimes against fraud. The scientific man 
no doubt finds the path of ordinary experimental 
investigation strewn with obstacles, but at least he 
does not usually find among them the difficulty 
presented by moral frailty. He knows that, if he 
errs, it is the fault of the observer, not the fault of 
the observed. He knows that, if his interrogation 
of nature fails to elicit anything of interest, it is 
because he has failed in his cross-examination, not 
because nature, when put in the witness-box, tells 
untruths. But we of this Society are less happily 
situated. Deception, conscious or unconscious, 
makes observation doubly and trebly difficult, and 
throws obstacles in the way of the investigator 
which his happier brother working in the region of 
physical science has not to contend with. 

And there is yet another difficulty in our path 
from which those who cultivate physical science 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 161 

are happily free. They have, as the ultimate 
sources of their knowledge, the "five senses" which 
are the only generally recognised inlets through 
which the truths of external nature can penetrate 
into consciousness. But we have apparently to 
deal with cases in which not merely the normal 
senses, but some abnormal and half-completed 
sense, so to speak, comes into play; in which we 
have to collaborate with fellow-workers excep- 
tionally organised, who can neither describe, ac- 
count for, nor control, the unusual powers they 
appear to possess. 

This is not only a source of perplexity and diffi- 
culty to ourselves; it is a stumbling-block to the 
scientific specialists whose aid we seek. There are 
many who think that, because we cannot repeat our 
experiments and verify our results as we will and 
when we will, the experiments are not worth mak- 
ing, and the results are little better than illusion. 
But this is, I venture to say, a very unphilosophic 
view of the subject. Is there, after all, any a priori 
improbability in there being these half -formed and 
imperfectly developed senses, or inlets of external 
information, occasionally and sporadically de- 
veloped in certain members of the human race? 
Surely not. I should myself be disposed to say 
that, if our accepted views on development be really 
sound, phenomena like these, however strange, are 



162 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

exactly what we should have expected. For what 
says the theory of natural selection? It tells us 
among other things that there have gradually been 
elaborated, by the extinction of the unfit and the 
survival of the fit, organisms possessed of senses 
adapted to further their success in the struggle for 
existence. To suppose that these senses should be 
in full correspondence with the whole of external 
nature, appears to me to be not only improbable, 
but, on any rational doctrine of probability, abso- 
lutely impossible. There must be countless forms 
of being, countless real existences, which, had the 
line of our evolution gone in a different direction, 
or had the necessities of our primitive ancestors 
been of a different kind, would have made them- 
selves known to us through senses the very char- 
acter of which we are at present unable to imagine. 
And, if this be so, is it not in itself likely that here 
and there we should come across rudimentary be- 
ginnings of such senses; beginnings never de- 
veloped and probably never to be developed by the 
operation of selection; mere by-products of the 
great evolutionary machine, never destined to be 
turned to any useful account? And it may be — I 
am only hazarding an unverifiable guess — it may 
be, I say, that in the case of individuals thus ab- 
normally endowed, we really have come across 
faculties which, had it been worth nature's while, 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 163 

had they been of any value or purpose in the 
struggle for existence, might have been generally 
developed, and become the common possession of 
the whole human race. Had this occurred, we 
should have been enabled to experiment upon phe- 
nomena, which we now regard as occult and mys- 
terious, with the same confidence in the sources of 
our information that we now enjoy in any of our 
ordinary inquiries into the laws of the material, or 
at least of the organic, world. If this be so, I do 
not think that men of science ought to show any 
excessive or distrustful impatience of the apparent 
irregularity which no doubt constitutes one of the 
most provoking characteristics of these abnormal 
phenomena. 

But there is another difficulty, from the point of 
view of science, attaching to some apparent results 
of our investigations, which is not disposed of by 
the theory which I have just suggested. Suppose, 
for the sake of argument, that a certain proportion 
of the human race possess abnormal powers of per- 
ception in a very rudimentary form — it is evident 
that they may give rise to two kinds of experience. 
They may give us a kind of experience which shall 
be perfectly congruous with our existing concep- 
tion of the physical universe, or they may give us 
one which harmonises with that conception imper- 
fectly or not at all. As an example of the first I 



164 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

might revert, by way of illustration, to the dis- 
covery, previously referred to, of Professor Hertz. 
He, as I have already reminded you, has experi- 
mentally proved that ordinary light is a case of 
electro-magnetic radiation. Light consists, as you 
all know, of undulations of what is known as the 
luminif erous ether ; electro-magnetic waves are also 
undulations of the same ether, differing from the 
undulations which we call light only in their length. 
Now, it is easy to conceive that we might have a 
sense which would enable us to perceive the long 
undulations in the same way as we now perceive the 
short ones. That would be a new sense, but, though 
new, its deliverances would, without the least diffi- 
culty, have fitted in with the existing notions which 
scientific men have framed of the universe. But, 
unfortunately, in our special investigations we 
seem to come across experiences which are not so 
amenable. We apparently get hints of occurrences 
which, if they be well established, as they appear 
to be, cannot, so far as I can judge, by any amount 
of manipulation, be squeezed into the accepted pat- 
tern of the natural world ; and if that be so, then we 
are indeed engaged in a work of prodigious diffi- 
culty, but of an importance of which the difficulty 
is the measure and the proof. For we should then 
be actually on the threshold of a region ordered 
according to laws which are not merely unknown, 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 165 

but which to all appearance have little congruity 
with those which govern the regions already within 
our ken. 

Let me dwell on this point a little more, as it is 
one of central interest to all who are engaged in 
our special investigations. What I am asserting is 
that the facts which we come across are very odd 
facts. I do not mean merely queer and unexpected : 
I mean "odd" in the sense that they are out of 
harmony with the accepted theories. They may or 
may not be strange and striking; but they are 
"odd" in the sense that whether dull or dramatic 
they seem to jar with the views which men of 
science and men of common sense generally enter- 
tain about the universe in which we live. 

In order to illustrate this distinction, I will take 
two very simple instances. I suppose everybody 
would say that it would be an extraordinary cir- 
cumstance if our earth, on its journey through 
space, were suddenly to perish by collision with 
some unknown body travelling across our path. 
Yet, though such an event would be dramatic and 
terrible, it is, after all, one of which no astronomer 
would assert the impossibility. He would say, I 
suppose, that it was most unlikely, but that, if it 
occurred, it would involve no change in astronomi- 
cal theory. Our globe, with the rest of the solar 
system, is hurrying, I do not know how many miles 



166 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

a second, in the direction of the constellation 
Hercules, There is no a priori ground for sup- 
posing that in the course of this mysterious journey, 
of whose cause we are absolutely ignorant, we may 
not come across some wanderer in interstellar 
space which will produce the uncomfortable results 
which I have ventured to indicate. Indeed, dur- 
ing the last two hundred years, astronomers have 
themselves been witness to stellar tragedies of in- 
comparably greater magnitude than that which 
would be produced by the destruction of so petty 
a planet as the one which we happen to inhabit. 
We have seen stars which shine from incalculable 
distances, and are of unknown magnitude, burst 
into sudden conflagration, blaze for a time with 
portentous brightness, and then slowly sink into 
obscurity. What that phenomenon precisely in- 
dicates we cannot say, but it certainly suggests a 
catastrophe far more tremendous than the sudden 
destruction of our particular world, which to us 
would, doubtless, seem sufficiently startling. 

This, then, is a specimen of an event which, how- 
ever strange, easily harmonises with our existing 
scientific conceptions. Contrast with this a class of 
(alleged) occurrences which at first sight, and to 
many observers, may appear commonplace and 
familiar, but which falls altogether outside ordi- 
nary scientific explanation. I have constantly met 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 167 

people who tell you, with no apparent conscious- 
ness of saying anything more out of the way than a 
remark about the weather, that by the exercise of 
their will they can make anybody at a little dis- 
tance turn round and look at them. Now such a 
fact (if fact it be) is far more scientifically 
extraordinary than would be the destruction of this 
globe by some such celestial catastrophe as the one 
I have imagined; and greatly mistaken are they 
who think that this exercise of "will power," as 
they call it, is the most natural thing in the world, 
something that everybody would have anticipated, 
something which hardly deserves scientific notice or 
requires scientific explanation. In reality it is a 
profound mystery if it be true, and no event, how- 
ever startling, which can be shown to fit naturally 
into the structure of the physical sciences should 
excite half so much intellectual curiosity as this 
trifling and seemingly commonplace phenomenon. 
Now, most of the persons who suppose them- 
selves to be endowed with this so-called will power 
are, I should imagine, the dupes of a too credulous 
fancy. But putting their testimony on one side, 
there remains a vast mass of evidence in favour of 
what we now call telepathy; and to telepathy the 
observations I have been making do in my opinion 
most strictly apply. For, consider! In every case 
of telepathy you have an example of action at a 



168 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

distance. Examples of real or apparent action at 
a distance are, of course, very common. Gravita- 
tion is such an example. We have not yet dis- 
covered any mechanism, if I may use the phrase, 
which can transmit gravitational influence from one 
body to another. Nevertheless, scientific men do 
not rest content with that view. I recollect it used 
to be maintained by the late Mr. John Mill that 
there was no ground for regarding with any spe- 
cial wonder the phenomenon of action at a distance. 
He may have been right, but I do not think you 
will find a first-rate physicist who is prepared to 
admit that gravity calls for no explanation. He is 
not ready, in other words, to accept action at a 
distance as an ultimate fact, though he has not as 
yet found any clue to the real nature of the links 
by which the attracting bodies act and react upon 
one another. 

But though gravitation and telepathy are alike 
in this, that we are quite ignorant of the means by 
which in either case distant entities influence one 
another, it would be a great mistake to suppose that 
the two modes of operation are equally mysterious. 
In the case of telepathy, there is not merely the 
difficulty which it shares with gravitation, the diffi- 
culty, I mean, of conjecturing the nature of the 
mechanism which operates between the agent and 
the patient, between the man who influences and 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 169 

the man who is influenced ; but what happens seems 
quite out of harmony with any of our accepted ideas 
as to the mode in which force ordinarily acts 
through space unoccupied by matter. Is this 
telepathic action a simple case of action from a 
centre of disturbance? Is it like the light of the 
sun, radiating equally in every direction? If it is, 
we should expect it to behave like other forces of 
the same kind. It ought, as it were, to get beaten 
out thinner and thinner the further it is removed 
from its original source — its effects diminishing 
with the distance, while showing themselves equally 
in all directions. But there is no evidence what- 
ever that diffusion of this kind actually takes place. 
There is no indication of any disturbance equal at 
equal distances from its point of origin, and 
diminishing as the distance increases according to 
some assignable law. Nothing like radiation ap- 
pears to be in question. 

But if we are to reject this idea, which is the first 
that ordinary analogies would suggest, what are we 
to put in its place? Are we to suppose that there 
is some means by which telepathic energy can be 
directed through space from mind to mind by some 
selective agency? If we are to believe this, we are 
face to face not only with a fact extraordinary in 
itself, but with a kind of fact which does not fit in 
with anything we know at present in the region 



170 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

either of physics or of physiology. It is true, no 
doubt, that we do know plenty of cases where 
energy is directed like water in a pipe, like an 
electric current in a wire, like a bullet from a rifle. 
But, then, in such cases there is always some mate- 
rial cause of this selective action. Is there any such 
material cause in the case of telepathy? There is 
no sign of it. We cannot form any notion of its 
character; and yet, if we are to draw the obvious 
conclusion from the facts observed, some selective 
guidance, material or immaterial, there must cer- 
tainly be. 

Here, then, we are face to face with a phenom- 
enon which is not less surprising from a scientific 
point of view because it has no great spectacular 
interest. Anyone who endeavours to wade through 
the mass of evidence collected by our Society on 
the subject will soon discover that it makes small 
appeal to our appetite for the dramatic, that it is 
often dull, and sometimes tedious. Dr. Johnson, 
if I rightly remember, once observed that the man 
who went to the novels of Richardson for the story 
had better hang himself. So with equal reason 
might we speak of the man who seeks, in the rec- 
ords of psychical research, the thrill of super- 
natural mystery which we justly demand from a 
well-written ghost story. It must be owned that, 
on the whole, our records make indifferent "copy." 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 171 

Yet sometimes, when they are least entertaining 
from the point of view of literature, they are most 
suggestive from the point of view of science; and 
science, be it remembered, is our first interest. 

Yet not, I freely admit, our only one. All 
arbitrary limitations of our sphere of work are to be 
avoided. To record, to investigate, to classify, and, 
if possible, to explain, facts of a far more startling 
and impressive character than these seemingly 
simple cases of telepathy is part of our business. 
Let us not neglect it. And if many are animated 
by a wish to get evidence, not through any process 
of metaphysical deduction, but by observation and 
experiment, that conscious beings exist unhelped 
and unhampered by organisms like our own, I see 
nothing in their action to criticise, much less to 
condemn. But while there is sufficient evidence, in 
my judgment, to justify all the labours of our So- 
ciety in this inviting field of research, it is not the 
field of research which lies closest to the ordinary 
subjects of scientific study. Therefore it is that, 
on an occasion when I specially desired to arrest the 
attention, and if possible to engage the interest, of 
men of science, I content myself with pointing to 
the definite and very simple experiments which, 
simple as they are, yet hint at conclusions not easily 
reconciled with our customary views of the physical 
world. If these experiments have been repeated 



172 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

under tests sufficiently crucial to prove that there is 
here something to be explained, all interested in 
science will ultimately be driven willingly or un- 
willingly to join us in the task of unravelling the 
tangled problems with which this Society is en- 
deavouring to deal. With what success such ef- 
forts will be crowned I know not. I have already 
indicated to you, at the beginning of my remarks, 
the special class of difficulties which besets our path. 
We are not endowed with the appropriate physical 
senses, we are ill supplied with appropriate sub- 
jects for experiment, we are hampered and em- 
barrassed at every turn by credulity, fraud, and 
prejudice. Nevertheless, if I rightly interpret the 
conclusions which many years of labour have forced 
upon our members, and upon others not among our 
number who are moved by a like spirit of inquiry, 
it does seem that outside the world of nature, as we, 
from the point of science, have been in the habit of 
conceiving it, there does lie a region in whose 
twilight some experimental knowledge may labori- 
ously be gleaned; and even if we cannot entertaiu 
any confident hope of discovering what laws its 
dim and shadowy phenomena obey, at all events it 
will be some gain to have shown, not as a matter of 
speculation or conjecture, but as a matter of ascer- 
tained fact, that there are things in heaven and 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 173 

earth not hitherto dreamed of in naturalistic 
philosophy. 

Note 

This address was delivered more than a quarter of a 
century ago. Much has happened since then; our views 
on the constitution of matter have been revolutionised, 
and though I believe the general argument to be, broadly 
speaking, sound and relevant to present-day issues, I 
should not now dogmatise quite so confidently as to what 
men of science think about gravitation, the ether, and 
action at a distance. 



PART TWO: POLITICAL 
VI: ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 



VI 

ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 1 

You have invited me, partly as a politician, partly 
as a philosopher, to say something for German 
readers upon Anglo-German relations. I fear that 
philosophers have little to say about the question, 
and that politicians may easily say too much; it is 
therefore with great misgiving that I comply with 
your invitation. I may perhaps do harm; I can- 
not think it likely that I shall do much good. But, 
as you appeal to me, I will make the attempt. 

Let me at once say that I do not propose to 
adopt the attitude either of a judge or of a critic. 
I may be able to explain, I may be able to diminish 
misunderstanding. I am by no means confident 
that I shall succeed, but it is the only attempt worth 
making. If I can present the English point of view 
clearly and without offence to your readers, it may 
do something, however slight, to mitigate existing 

1 This article, written for German readers, was contributed 
at the request of its editor to Nord und Siid, a well-known 
German periodical, two years before the outbreak of war, 
in June, 1912. 

177 



178 ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 

evils in so far as these are due to want of mutual 
comprehension. 

I use the phrase "English point of view" without 
hesitation ; for I believe that in this matter there is 
only one English point of view. I do not of course 
mean that every statement I am going to make is 
consciously accepted by every Englishman, nor if it 
be accepted that all Englishmen hold it with equal 
conviction. But I do mean that, in a very real 
sense, the deep uneasiness with which the people of 
this country contemplate possible developments of 
German policy, throws its shadows across the whole 
country, irrespective of party or of creed. 

Why is this? It cannot be attributed to preju- 
dices rooted in an historic past. The German 
nation has never been our enemy. In the long 
series of wars in which Britain was involved be- 
tween the Revolution of 1688 and the Peace of 
1815, we always had German States as our allies; 
and few have been the continental battles where 
English soldiers have fought in which no German 
soldier was fighting in the same cause. 

Nor are Englishmen unmindful of their share 
in the great debt which all the world owes to 
German genius and German learning. For some 
two hundred years Germany has been as clearly 
first in the art of music as ever Italy was in the art 
of painting. She has been the great pioneer in 



ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 179 

modern classical philology, in modern criticism, in 
modern historical research, in the science of lan- 
guage, in the comparative study of religions. 
Indeed, she has been much more than merely a pio- 
neer. She has not only shown how the work should 
be done, but she has willingly taken upon herself 
by far the largest share of the labour involved in 
doing it, and has harvested, as was just, by far the 
largest share of successful achievement. 

In the domain of the natural sciences the story is 
indeed less one-sided. We in Britain need not be 
ashamed of the roll of great men who have con- 
tributed to the scientific developments which have 
made the last hundred years illustrious. But how 
admirable, both in quality and quantity, has been 
the German work in these departments ! How per- 
fect is their organisation for research! How fruit- 
ful in discovery ! 

And what shall I say of German philosophy? It 
was of this in particular that you desired me to 
speak, but in truth I am not qualified to say any- 
thing but what is known and acknowledged 
throughout all countries. Though my small phil- 
osophic barque attempts its explorations in shal- 
lower waters, I admire the mighty stream of Euro- 
pean speculation, flowing since Leibniz mainly in 
German channels, which has done so much to sup- 
ply the world with a spiritual philosophy. At this 



180 ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 

moment, as I suppose, four out of every five occu- 
pants of philosophic chairs in countries speaking 
the language of Locke, of Berkeley, and of Hume, 
draw from German sources both the substance of 
their teaching and its inspiration. This surely is a 
great thing to say; for though philosophers be few 
in both nations, we must surely hope that their im- 
portance is not measured simply by their numbers. 

If, therefore, recent years have produced a 
change in the way in which ordinary Englishmen 
judge of German policy, it is due to no national 
prejudice, to no under-estimate of German worth, 
to no want of gratitude for German services in the 
cause of universal culture. To what then is it due? 
I reply that, so far as I can judge, it is due to the 
interpretation which they have thought themselves 
obliged to place upon a series of facts, or supposed 
facts, each of which taken by itself might be of 
small moment, but which taken together can 
neither be lightly treated nor calmly ignored. 

The first of these facts (the first at least to be 
realised) was the German Navy Bill and its results. 
No Englishman denies the right of every country 
to settle the character and magnitude of its own 
armaments ; and there has been, I believe, no eager- 
ness to detect in the German naval policy any in- 
tentions hostile to this country. But on such a 
point British opinion is sensitive, and must be sen- 



ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 181 

sitive, for reasons which are commonplaces here, but 
are, I think, imperfectly understood by many Ger- 
mans who, in general, are friendly to this country. 
Let me briefly indicate their character. 

If Englishmen were sure that a German fleet 
was only going to be used for defensive purposes — 
i.e. against aggression — they would not care how 
large it was ; for a war of aggression against Ger- 
many is to them unthinkable. There are, I am told, 
many Germans who would strongly dissent from 
this statement. Yet it is no paradox. Putting on 
one side all considerations based on public morality, 
it must be remembered, in the first place, that we 
are a commercial nation; and war, whatever its 
issue, is ruinous to commerce and to the credit on 
which commerce depends. It must be remem- 
bered, in the second place, that we are a political 
nation ; and an unprovoked war would shatter in a 
day the most powerful Government and the most 

J united party. It must be remembered, in the third 
place, that we are an insular nation, wholly depend- 
ent on sea-borne supplies, possessing no consider- 

. able army either for home defence or foreign serv- 
ice, and compelled, therefore, to play for very un- 
equal stakes should Germany be our opponent in 
the hazardous game of war. 

It is this last consideration which I would ear- 
nestly ask enlightened Germans to weigh well if 



182 ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 

they would understand the British point of view. 
It can be made clear in a very few sentences : There 
are two ways in which a hostile country can be 
crushed. It can be conquered, or it can be starved. 
If Germany were master in our home waters, she 
could apply both methods to Britain. Were Brit- 
ain ten times master in the North Sea, she could 
apply neither method to Germany. Without a 
superior fleet, Britain would no longer count as a 
Power. Without any fleet at all, Germany would 
remain the greatest Power in Europe. 

It is therefore the mere instinct of self-preserva- 
tion which obliges Englishmen not merely to take 
account of the growth in foreign navies, but anx- 
iously to weigh the motives of those who build them. 
If they are built solely for purposes of defence, 
Britain would not, indeed, be thereby relieved of 
the duty of maintaining the standard of relative 
strength required for national safety; but she 
would have no ground for disquiet, still less for ill- 
will. But does Germany make it easy for Britain 
to take this view? The external facts of the sit- 
uation appear to be as follows: the greatest mili- 
tary Power and the second greatest naval Power 
in the world is adding both to her army and to her 
navy. She is increasing the strategic railways 
which lead to frontier states — not merely to fron- 
tier states which themselves possess powerful 



ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 183 

armies, but to small states which can have no desire 
but to remain neutral if their formidable neigh- 
bours should unhappily become belligerents. She 
is in like manner modifying her naval arrange- 
ments so as to make her naval strength instantly 
effective. It is conceivable that all this may be 
only in order to render herself impregnable against 
attack. Such an object would certainly be com- 
mendable, though the efforts undergone to secure 
it might (to outside observers) seem in excess of 
any possible danger. If all nations could be made 
impregnable to the same extent, peace would 
doubtless be costly, but at least it would be secure. 
Unfortunately, no mere analysis of the German 
preparations for war will show for what purposes 
they are designed. A tremendous weapon has 
been forged; every year adds something to its effi- 
ciency and power; it is as formidable for purposes 
of aggression as for purposes of defence. But to 
what end it was originally designed, and in what 
cause it will ultimately be used, can only be deter- 
mined, if determined at all, by extraneous con- 
siderations. 

I here approach the most difficult and delicate 
part of my task. Let me preface it by saying that 
ordinary Englishmen do not believe, and certainly 
I do not believe, either that the great body of the 
German people wish to make an attack on their 



184 ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 

neighbours, or that the German Government in- 
tends it. A war in which the armed manhood of 
half Europe would take part can be no object of 
deliberate desire either for nations or for states- 
men. The danger lies elsewhere. It lies in the 
co-existence of that marvellous instrument of war- 
fare, the German army and navy, with the assid- 
uous, I had almost said the organised, advocacy of 
a policy which it seems impossible to reconcile with 
the peace of the world or the rights of nations. 
For those who accept this policy German develop- 
ment means German territorial expansion. All 
countries which hinder, though it be only in self- 
defence, the realisation of this ideal, are regarded 
as hostile ; and war, or the threat of war, is deemed 
the natural and fitting method by which the ideal 
itself is to be accomplished. 

Now it is no part of my intention to criticise such 
theories. My business is to explain the views which 
are held in Britain, not to condemn those which are 
preached in Germany. Let German students, if 
they will, redraw the map of Europe in harmony 
with what they conceive to be the present distribu- 
tion of the Germanic race ; let them regard the Ger- 
man Empire of the twentieth century as the heir- 
at-law of all territories included in the Holy 
Roman Empire of the twelfth; let them assume 
that Germany should be endowed at the cost of 



ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 185 

other nations with overseas dominions proportion- 
ate to her greatness in Europe. But do not let 
them ask Englishmen to approve. We have had 
too bitter an experience of the ills which flow from 
the endeavour of any single state to dominate Eu- 
rope; we are too surely convinced of the perils 
which such a policy, were it successful, would bring 
upon ourselves, as well as upon others, to treat 
them as negligible. Negligible surely they are not. 
In periods of international calm they always made 
for increasing armaments; in periods of interna- 
tional friction they aggravate the difficulties of di- 
plomacy. This is bad; but it is not the worst. 
Their effects, as it seems to us, go deeper. To them 
is due the conviction, widely held, I am afraid, by 
many Germans, that Britain stands in their coun- 
try's light, that Englishmen desire to thwart her 
natural development, are jealous of her most legit- 
imate growth. Of these crimes we are quite un- 
conscious; but surely it is no slight evil that they 
should be so readily believed. If ever, by some 
unhappy fate, it became an accepted article of faith 
in either nation that Germany and Britain were 
predestined enemies, that the ambitions of the one 
and the security of the other were irreconcilably 
opposed, the predictions of those prophets (and 
they abound in the Chancelleries of Europe) who 
regard a conflict between them as inevitable, would 



186 ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS 

be already half -fulfilled. But for myself I am no 
believer in such predestination. Germany has 
taught Europe much; she can teach it yet more. 
She can teach it that organised military power may 
be used in the interests of peace as effectually as 
in those of war; that the appetite for domination 
belongs to an outworn phase of patriotism; that 
the furtherance of civilisation, for which she has so 
greatly laboured, must be the joint work of many 
peoples ; and that the task for none of them is light- 
ened by the tremendous burden of modern arma- 
ments, or the perpetual preoccupation of national 
self-defence. If on these lines she is prepared to 
lead, she will find a world already prepared to fol- 
low — prepared in no small measure by what she 
has herself accomplished in the highest realms of 
science and speculation. But if there be signs that 
her desires point to other objects, and that her 
policy is moulded by ambitions of a different type, 
can it be a matter of surprise that other countries 
watch the steady growth of her powers of aggres- 
sion with undisguised alarm, and anxiously con- 
sider schemes for meeting what they are driven to 
regard as a common danger? 



PART TWO: POLITICAL 

VII: A GERMAN'S VIEW OF GERMAN 
WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 



VII 

A GERMAN'S VIEW OF GERMAN 
WORLD-POLICY AND WAR » 

Until the late Professor Cramb published his 
Germany and 'England, Treitschke was scarcely 
even a name to the British public. Even now his 
name is much better known than his books. This is 
partly due to the fact that his main work was an 
unfinished history of modern Germany, and that 
much of this dealt with the period which began 
with the peace of 1815 and ended with the Bis- 
marckian era — a period rich in scientific, philo- 
sophical, and musical achievement, but politically 
barren and, to the foreigner, dull. It is also due 
to the fact that the full significance of the political 
theories to which his lectures were devoted has only 
recently been made plain. Political theories, from 
those of Aristotle downwards, have ever been re- 
lated, either by harmony or contrast, to the political 
practice of their day; but of no theories is this more 
glaringly true than of those expounded in these 

1 Introduction to the English translation (Heinrich von 
Treitschke's Lectures on "Politics") by Blanche Dugdale 
and Torben de Bille, published in 191 6. 

189 



190 A GERMAN'S VIEW OF 

volumes. They could not have been written before 
1870. Nothing quite like them will be written 
after 1917. They bear somewhat the same relation 
to Bismarck as Machiavelli's Prince bears to Caesar 
Borgia — though no one would put Treitschke on a 
level with Machiavelli, or Borgia on a level with 
Bismarck. 

Their author, born in 1834, and twenty-seven 
years old when William I became King of Prussia, 
with Bismarck as his Minister, is thus qualified by 
age to represent the generation which, in its youth, 
sought in "Liberal principles" the means of fur- 
thering its national ideals ; found them utterly im- 
potent and ineffectual; and welcomed with patri- 
otic fervour the Bismarckian policy of "blood and 
iron." 

It is permissible to conjecture that if the political 
creed of Treitschke's youth had borne the practical 
fruit which he so passionately desired, the subse- 
quent history of the world would have been wholly 
different. If "liberalism," in the continental 
sense, 1 had given Germany empire and power, 

1 It is hardly necessary to observe that I use the words 
"Liberal principles" and "Liberalism" in their continental, 
not in their British, meaning. We borrowed them from abroad, 
and have nsed them to designate party, or, rather, a particular 
section of a particular party. But "Liberalism" as used in its 
original home is a name for principles of constitutional liberty 
and representative government, which have long been the com- 
mon property of all parties throughout the English-speaking 
portions of the world. 



WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 191 

militarism would never have grown to its present 
exorbitant proportions. The greatest tragedy of 
modern times is that she owes her unity and her 
greatness not to the free play of public opinion 
acting through constitutional machinery, but to the 
unscrupulous genius of one great man, who found 
in the Prussian monarchy, and the Prussian mili- 
tary system, fitting instruments for securing Ger- 
man ideals. 

The main interest, then, of these lectures to me, 
and perhaps to others, lies in the fact that they rep- 
resent the mature thought of a vigorous person- 
ality, who, in early manhood, saw the war with 
Denmark, the war with Austria, and the war with 
France, create, in violation of all "Liberal" prin- 
ciples, that German Empire for which German 
Liberals had vainly striven. War, it was evident, 
could be both glorious and cheap; absolute mon- 
archy had shown itself the only effective instru- 
ment for national self-realisation; a diplomatic and 
military policy, carried through in defiance of pub- 
lic opinion, had performed in a few months what 
generations of debaters had been unable to accom- 
plish. 

It is useless, of course, to look for impartiality 
in political speculations born under such conditions. 
Forty or fifty years ago the ordinary British 
reader sought in German historical research a ref- 



192 A GERMANS VIEW OF 

uge from the party bias so common among British 
historians. Hume, Lingard, Alison, Macaulay, 
Carlyle, Froude, Freeman — all in their several 
ways looked at their selected periods through 
glasses coloured by their own political or theolog- 
ical predilections. Mitford and Grote carried their 
modern prejudices into their pictures of classical 
antiquity. But the German historian, though his 
true course might perhaps be deflected by some 
over-ingenious speculation, was free (we sup- 
posed) from these cruder and more human sources 
of error. He might be dull, but he was at least 
fair. With the development of German unity, 
however, German impartiality vanished. To 
Ranke succeeded Von Sybel and Mommsen. Po- 
litical detachment could no longer be looked for; 
learning was yoked to politics; and history was 
written with a purpose. In no one does this pa- 
triotic prejudice produce more curious results than 
in Treitschke. His loves and his hates, his hopes 
and his fears, his praise and his blame, his philo- 
sophic theories, his practical suggestions — all draw 
their life from the conviction that German great- 
ness was due to her military system, that her mili- 
tary system was the creation of Prussia, and that 
Prussia was the creation of Hohenzollern abso- 
lutism. 

Consider, for example, his abstract theory of 



WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 193 

the state which colours all his more important po- 
litical speculation. An English writer who wished 
to set forth his views on education, local govern- 
ment, military organisation, and so forth, might 
perhaps regard an abstract theory of the state as a 
superfluous luxury. But then, as Treitschke ex- 
plains in another connection, the English are 
"shallow" and the Germans "profound," so that 
this difference of treatment was to be expected; 
and certainly the English reader has no ground for 
regretting it. For though the theory itself is 
neither very original nor very coherent ; though its 
appeals to history are unconvincing; yet its popu- 
larity in the country of its birth gives the key to 
contemporary history. It explains and justifies 
modern Germany. The State, says Trietschke, is 
Power. Of so unusual a type is its power that it 
has no power to limit its power. Hence no treaty, 
when it becomes inconvenient, can be binding; 
hence the very notion of general arbitration is ab- 
surd ; hence war is part of the Divine order. Small 
states must be contemptible because they must be 
weak; success is the test of merit, power is its 
reward ; and all nations get what they deserve. 

A theory of politics entirely governed by 
patriotic passion is not likely to be either very 
impartial or very profound. Even the most dex- 
terous literary treatment could hardly hide its in- 



194 A GERMAN'S VIEW OF 

herent narrowness. But Trietschke, to do him 
justice, attempts no disguises. He airs his preju- 
dices with a naivete truly amazing. I will not say 
that he wanted humour. Many things struck him 
as exquisitely comic — small states, for example, 
and the Dutch language. He occasionally enliv- 
ened his lectures, we are told, by a satirical imita- 
tion of a British "hurrah." He clearly, therefore, 
possessed his own sense of fun, yet he remained 
sadly lacking in that prophylactic humour which 
protects its possessor against certain forms of ex- 
travagance and absurdity. 

In nothing does this come out more clearly than 
in his excessive laudation of his own countrymen, 
and his not less excessive depreciation of everybody 
else. Partly no doubt this was done for a purpose. 
He had formed the opinion, rather surprising to a 
foreigner, that the Germans, as a nation, are un- 
duly diffident — always in danger of "enervating 
their nationality through possessing too little rug- 
ged national pride." * It must be owned that very 
little of this weakness is likely to remain in any 
German who takes Trietschke seriously. Never- 
theless, it should have been possible to explain to 
the German people how much better they are than 
the rest of the world without pouring crude abuse 
upon every other nation. If the German be indeed 

1 I. 19-20. 



WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 195 

deficient in "rugged pride," by all means tell him 
what a fine fellow he really is. But why spoil the 
compliment by lowering the standard of compari- 
son? It may, for example, be judicious to encour- 
age the too diffident Prussians by assuring them 
that they "are by their character more reasonable 
and more free than Frenchmen." * But when the 
Prussian reader discovers that in Treitschke's 
opinion the French are excessively unreasonable 
and quite incapable of freedom, the effect is 
marred. If, again, it be needful to remind the Ger- 
mans of their peculiar sensibility to the beauties of 
nature, is it necessary to emphasise their superior- 
ity by explaining that when resting in a forest they 
Ke upon their backs, while the Latin races, less 
happily endowed, repose upon their stomachs ? 2 

Inordinate self-esteem may be a very agreeable 
quality. Those who possess it are often endowed 
with an imperturbable complacency which softens 
social intercourse, and is not inconsistent with some 
kindly feeling towards those whom they deem to 
be their inferiors. But it must be acknowledged 
that with Treitschke this quality does not appear in 
its most agreeable form. With him it is censorious 
and full of suspicion. Unlike charity it greatly 
vaunteth itself; unlike charity it thinketh all evil. 

*I. 66. "I. 206. 



196 A GERMAN'S VIEW OF 

Rare indeed are the references to other nations 
which do not hold them up to hatred or contempt. 
America, France, Austria, Spain, Russia, Britain 
are in turn required to supply the sombre back- 
ground against which the virtues of Germany shine 
forth with peculiar lustre. The Dutch, we are told, 
have "deteriorated morally and physically." * 
Americans are mere money-grabbers. The Rus- 
sians are barbarians. The Latin races are degen- 
erate. The English have lost such poor virtues as 
they once possessed; while their "want of chivalry" 
shocks the "simple fidelity of the German nature." 2 
Cannot the subjects of the Kaiser realise "the sim- 
ple fidelity of their German nature" without being 
reminded how forcibly that "simple fidelity" is im- 
pressed by "the want of chivalry in the English 
character"? We need not quarrel over these opin- 
ions. They are made by a German for Germans, 
and doubtless they suit their market. But, when 
Treitschke allows his statements of fact and his 
moral judgment to be violently distorted by na- 
tional prejudice, his errors become more serious. 

I do not here refer to his wider generalisations, 
though I often disagree with them. I think, for 
example, that he exaggerates the absorption of the 
individual by the community in the city states of 

1 I. 50. 2 II. 395. 



WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 197 

antiquity; and his classification of various forms of 
government has not much to recommend it. On 
such questions, however, judgments may easily dif- 
fer. But what are we to say of the misstatements 
of bare historical fact in which he indulges without 
scruple? Some of these, no doubt, are mere slips, 
as, for example, when he places the activities of 
Titus Oates in the reign of James II ; * others are 
unimportant exhibitions of ignorance, as when he 
assures his readers that in England there are no 
Crown lands ; 2 others, again, are mere exercises of 
the imagination, as when he tells us that, "after 
Henry VIII's hymeneal prodigies, it was enacted 
by Parliament that its assent was necessary to 
the validity of any Royal marriage." 3 

These blunders are presumably due to want of 
memory or want of care. But others are the off- 
spring of invincible prejudice. When he tells us 
that England "turns a deaf ear on principle to 
generous ideas," 4 the judgment may to an Eng- 
lishman appear absurd, and, in the mouth of a 
German, even impudent. Yet it must to a certain 
extent be a matter of opinion. Character cannot 
be tested in retorts or weighed in balances. But 
what excuse can there be for such a particular his- 
torical statement as that "England's first thought 

x II. 473. 2 II. 490. 3 II. 165. 4 II. 614. 



198 A GERMANS VIEW OF 

in abolishing slavery was the destruction of colon- 
ial competition?" * There was not, and there could 
not be, any possible competition between British 
manufacturers and the producers of slave-grown 
sugar. The charge is not merely false, it is foolish. 
Again, there is something peculiarly absurd in 
the statement that a no sooner had the French 
Revolution broken out than Pitt eagerly began to 
urge a reform of the franchise." 2 This is not 
merely a misstatement of fact. It is a misstate- 
ment of fact which shows an utter want of compre- 
hension of English political history at the period 
referred to. There is no reason why even a Pro- 
fessor of Modern History at the University of 
Berlin should know the details of Pitt's abortive 
efforts at parliamentary reform; but he ought to 
know enough of the subject to prevent him mis- 
taking the whole significance of the facts to which 
he refers. Treitschke's blunder is not simply one 
of chronology; it shows complete misapprehension 
of the true relations between the French Revolu- 
tion and English constitutional development. So 
far from the outbreak of the French Revolution 
having inspired Pitt to attempt parliamentary re- 
form, it put a sudden and violent stop to a repeti- 
tion of the efforts he had already made. In other 

1 I. 162. 2 II. 157. 



WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 199 

countries the spirit of the French Revolution may- 
have stimulated political development. In Britain 
its excesses killed political development for a 
generation. 

One more example of Treitschke's extraordinary- 
carelessness I will give, because it illustrates his 
shortcomings as a student of comparative politics. 
He is drawing a parallel between the German and 
the British methods of settling the relations be- 
tween executive authority and the rights of indi- 
vidual citizens. He acknowledges that in Germany- 
magistrates and police possess powers far in excess 
of those possessed by the corresponding authorities 
in Britain; he acknowledges that these powers may 
be abused. But this, he argues, is the lesser of two 
evils. The British system would, in his judgment, 
be quite unworkable if it could not be immediately 
suspended in case of emergency. England, he tells 
his hearers, is continually proclaiming martial law; 
according to him no year passes without the Riot 
Act being read * ; and when the Riot Act is read 
he supposes the whole machinery of ordinary law 
to be put out of gear. This, it need hardly be ob- 
served, is nonsense from beginning to end. Martial 
law is never proclaimed; many years pass without 
the Riot Act being read; and when the Riot Act is 

l I. 157. 



200 A GERMAN'S VIEW OF 

read, the machinery of law is neither stopped nor 
in the slightest degree interfered with. * 

Abuse of Britain, Holland, and America, con- 
temptuous references to the Latin nations, 
extravagant laudations of everything German 
(except indeed the small courts of Germany), still 
more extravagant laudations of everything Prus- 
sian, and particularly the Prussian monarchy, are 
but the setting intended to throw into high relief 
his own national ideals. We are all familiar with 
the stock character in fiction of the nouveau riche, 
who is at once justly proud of having made his 
own fortune, and bitterly contemptuous of those 
who have inherited theirs. They are, in his eyes, 
weak, degenerate, and incompetent, unworthy of 
the fortunes which ancestral energy, or ancestral 
luck, has conferred upon them. But in the very 
midst of his envious indignation, he cannot shake 
off the ambition to follow in their steps; he must 
imitate those whom he affects to despise. 

I do not know whether there is anything in real 
life corresponding to this fancy picture; but in the 
commonwealth of nations the part is aptly played 
by the German Empire as Treitschke saw it. Con- 
sider, for example, his views on colonisation. It is 

1 This introduction is by no means intended as a Review 
of Treitschke's lectures, and this list of inaccuracies, drawn 
entirely from Treitschke's references to England, has no pre- 
tensions to be complete. 



WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 201 

not easy to see why colonial possessions appeal so 
strongly to his imagination; for he dislikes new 
countries almost more than he dislikes every old 
country except Germany. The notion, for exam- 
ple, that the culture of the new world can ever rival 
the culture of the old seems to him absurd. He 
observes, though not in these lectures, that a Ger- 
man who goes to the United States is "lost to civil- 
isation" — an amiable sentiment which seems hardly 
consistent with the passion for acquiring new coun- 
tries. But the real reason for these ambitions be- 
comes plain on further examination. While Ger- 
many was in the throes of the Thirty Years' War, 
or slowly recovering from its effects, England, the 
detested rival, was laying the foundations of the 
English-speaking communities beyond the seas; 
and while Frederick the Great was robbing his 
neighbours, and his successors were struggling with 
the forces let loose by the French Revolution, the 
hold of English-speaking peoples upon regions 
outside Europe increased and strengthened. 

This was quite enough for Treitschke. What 
Britain had must be worth having. If there was 
something worth having and Germany had it not, 
this must be due to the bad luck which sometimes 
pursues even the most deserving. If Germany had 
it not and England had it, this must be due to the 
good luck which sometimes befalls even the most 



202 A GERMAN'S VIEW OF 

incompetent. But such inequalities are not to be 
tolerated. They must be redressed, if need be by 
force. The "outcome" (he tells us) "of our next 
successful war must be the acquisition of colonies 
by any possible means." x 

It would seem, however, that Treitschke was 
dimly aware that even to a German audience such 
a doctrine might seem a trifle cynical. He there- 
fore advances a subtler motive for these colonial 
ambitions. Germany, he tells us, should bear a 
part in the improvement of inferior races. She 
should become a pioneer of civilisation in savage 
lands. To outside observers, indeed, it does not 
appear that either the practice of his countrymen, 
or his own theories, suggest that Germany has any 
particular qualifications for this missionary enter- 
prise. What is likely to be the fate of coloured 
races under German domination, when men like 
Treitschke frankly avow that "in Livonia and Kur- 
land there is no other course open to us (the Ger- 
mans) but to keep the subject races in as uncivi- 
lised a condition as possible, and thus prevent them 
becoming a danger to the handful of their con- 
querors." 2 

Here we come back to the fundamental thought 
of Treitschke — the State as Will to Power, and to 
his patriotic corollary that a Prussianised Ger- 

*I. 119. 2 I. 122. 



WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 203 

many under a Hohenzollern dynasty should enable 
that thought to be realised. In supporting this 
view there is no extravagance, historical, or moral, 
from which he shrinks. He tells us, for example, 
that Frederick the Great was the "greatest King 
who ever reigned or* earth." l He accordingly 
finds in him the most unexpected virtues. Freder- 
ick's dominating motive towards the end of his life 
was, it seems, "the desire to execute ideal justice." 2 
A noble desire truly; but surely not one which 
should expect to find much satisfaction in the par- 
tition of Poland. Do you ask the reason for this 
extravagance of laudation? The answer is that 
Frederick was the greatest of the Hohenzollerns, 
that the Hohenzollerns created the Prussian State 
and the Prussian Army, that the Prussian State 
and the Prussian Army created Germany. Treit- 
schke positively gloats over Prussian supremacy. 
"The will of the German Empire," he observes, 
"must in the last resort be the will of Prussia." 3 
All small states are ridiculous, but the most ridi- 
culous of small states are the Kingdoms of Ba- 
varia, Saxony, and Wurtemberg. "The German 
army, not the German parliament, is in Germany 
the real and effective bond of national union." 4 
And the German army is a Prussian creation. 
He does not, of course, pretend that a Hohen- 

1 II. 68. 2 II. 69. 3 II. 375. *II. 390. 



204 A GERMAN'S VIEW OF 

zollern can do no wrong. He goes the length, in- 
deed, of accusing one of them, Frederick William 
IV, of "deadly crime." 2 And what was this deadly- 
crime? It was that after sending in troops to as- 
sist the Kings of Bavaria and Saxony to restore 
order, he withdrew them without destroying the 
independence of the states he had gone to protect. 
He behaved like a gentleman, but he sinned against 
the law of force. 

But in spite of this lapse from patriotic virtue, 
and notwithstanding that it is difficult to say much 
in favour of any of Frederick the Great's success- 
ors until we come to William I, Treitschke holds 
firmly to the belief that the Prussian monarchy is 
a thing apart, and that Hohenzollern royalty is not 
as other royalties. Sometimes, indeed, this senti- 
ment shows itself in a somewhat ludicrous fashion. 
For example, Treitschke, in the course of these 
lectures, vigorously defends the use of classical 
studies in the education of youth. There is no way, 
according to him, in which intellect and taste can 
be more successfully developed than by a thorough 
study of Greek and Latin. 2 So far, so good. But 
a little further on the lecturer has to deal — not with 
the education of ordinary mankind, but — with that 
of a German prince, and we find to our surprise 
that in the case of a German prince a classical edu- 

1 I. 95. 2 I. 375. 



WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 205 

cation has no merits. He must learn French and 
English. Why should he do more? "Why on 
earth should he be bothered with Latin, let alone 
Greek?" 1 We rub our eyes and ask what this 
outburst can mean. Are "intellect and taste" of 
no value to a German prince? Or is a German 
prince privileged by the grace of God to acquire 
them without education, or by an education inap- 
plicable to the common herd? We may be sure 
that none of these alternatives represent Treit- 
schke's considered views. I hazard another guess. 
I suggest that the lecturer must have known some 
young Hohenzollern prince well acquainted with 
French and English, but quite innocent of Latin 
and Greek! 

From these brief criticisms the reader will be 
able to form some conjecture as to what he may 
expect to find in the following pages. He will find 
many acute observations forcibly expressed, and 
presumably accurate, upon German history, con- 
temporary and recent. He will find many obser- 
vations forcibly expressed, but most certainly in- 
accurate, upon foreign history, contemporary and 
recent. He will throughout find himself in the 
presence of a vigorous personality, with clear-cut 
views about the future of his country and the meth- 
ods whereby they are to be realised, but he will not 

1 IL 72. 



206 A GERMAN'S VIEW OF 

find breadth of view, generous sympathies, or sys- 
tematic thought. In Treitschke there is nothing 
profound, and his political speculations are held 
together not so much by consistent thought as by 
the binding power of one ruling passion. 

The result is curious and interesting. Treitschke 
was a man of wide, although not apparently 
of very accurate, knowledge. Fragments of 
Christianity, of Ethics, of Liberalism, are casually 
embedded in the concrete blocks out of which he 
has built his political system; but they are foreign 
bodies which do nothing to strengthen the struc- 
ture. Power based on war is his ideal, and the 
verdict of war not only must be accepted, but ought 
to be accepted. The sentimentalist may regret 
that Athens fell before Sparta, that Florence 
dwindled before Venice, but the wise man knows 
better. Art and imagination do not contribute to 
Power, and it is only Power that counts. On it 
everything is based, by it everything is justified. 
It even supplies a short cut to conclusions which 
reason may hesitate to adopt. It required, as 
Treitschke observes, the battlefields of Bohemia 
and the Main to "convince" the German people 
that Prussia should control their destinies. 1 

It is not surprising that a man who held these 
views should regard with something like disgust 

1 1. 66. 



WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 207 

and dismay the attempts of well-meaning persons 
to bring peace on earth. The whole tribe of paci- 
fists who would substitute arbitration for war fill 
him with loathing. Like them he has his ideals, 
but they are of a very different order. His Utopia 
appears to be a world in which all small states have 
been destroyed, and in which the large states are all 
either fighting or preparing for battle. "War," 
he says, "will endure to the end of history. The 
laws of human thought and of human nature for- 
bid any alternative, neither is one to be wished 
for." x 

Deeply as he despised those who, in his own 
phrase, "rave about everlasting peace,*' there are 
transient moments in which he almost seems to fear 
them. Even the most robust faith will sometimes 
weaken; for a moment even Treitschke trembles 
at the thought that men may some day cease to cut 
each other's throats. "What," he pathetically asks, 
"if war should really disappear, and with it all 
movement and all growth?" 2 What if mankind 
should deliberately deprive itself of the "one 
remedy for an ailing civilisation"? 

The thought is terrible, but, supported by re- 
ligion, Treitschke's confidence remains unmoved. 
"Are not the great strides civilisation makes 
against barbarism and unreason only made actual 

1 I. 65. 2 I. 68. 



208 WORLD-POLICY AND WAR 

by the sword?" 1 Does not the Bible say that 
"greater love hath no man than to lay down his life 
for his friend"? Are we then going to be seduced 
by the "blind worshippers of an eternal peace"? 2 
No. Let us reject these unworthy thoughts: being 
well assured that "the God above us will see to it 
that war shall return again, a terrible medicine 
for mankind diseased." 3 

Since these lectures were delivered the longed- 
for medicine has been supplied to us in overflowing 
measure. Even the physician himself could hardly 
ask for more. Yet were he here to watch the ap- 
plication of his favourite remedy, what would he 
say of the patient? 

1 I. 65. 2 I. 65. 3 I. 69. 



PART TWO: POLITICAL 
VIII: THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 



VIII 

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS * 

The phrase "freedom of the seas" is, naturally, 
attractive to British and American ears. For the 
extension of freedom into all departments of life 
and over the whole civilised world has been one of 
the chief aspirations of the English-speaking peo- 
ples, and efforts towards that end have formed no 
small part of their contribution to civilisation. But 
"freedom" is a word of many meanings; and we 
shall do well to consider in what meaning the Ger- 
mans use it when they ask for it, not (it may be 
safely said) because they love freedom, but be- 
cause they hate Britain. 

About the "freedom of the seas," in one sense, 
we are all agreed. England and Holland fought 
for it in times gone by; and it is, indeed, to their 
success that the United States may be said, without 
exaggeration, to owe its very existence. 

For if, three hundred years ago, the maritime 
claims of Spain and Portugal had been admitted, 
whatever else North America might have been it 

1 Interview given to the American Press, May 191 6. 

211 



212 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

would not have been English-speaking. It neither 
would have spoken the language, nor obeyed 
the laws, nor enjoyed the institutions, which, in the 
last analysis, are of British origin. 

But the "freedom of the seas'" desired by the 
modern German is a very different thing from the 
freedom for which our forefathers fought in days 
of old. How, indeed, can it be otherwise? The 
most simple-minded must feel suspicious when they 
find that these missionaries of maritime freedom 
are the very same persons who preach and who 
practise upon land the extremest doctrines of 
military absolutism. 

Ever since the genius of Bismarck created the 
German Empire by Prussian rifles, welding the 
German people into a great unity by military 
means, on a military basis, German ambitions have 
been a cause of unrest to the entire world. Com- 
mercial and political domination, depending upon 
a gigantic army autocratically governed, has been 
and is the German ideal. 

If, then, Germany wants what she calls the free- 
dom of the seas, it is solely as a means whereby 
this ideal may receive world-wide extension. The 
power of Napoleon never extended beyond the 
coast line of Europe. Further progress was barred 
by the British fleets and by them alone. Ger- 
many is determined to endure no such limitations ; 






THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 213 

and if she cannot defeat her enemies at sea, at least 
she expects to paralyse their sea-power. 

There is a characteristic simplicity in the meth- 
ods by which she sets about attaining this object. 
She poses as a reformer of international law, 
though international law has never bound her for 
an hour. She objects to "economic pressure," 
when it is exercised by a superior fleet, though she 
sets no limit to the brutal completeness with which 
economic pressure may be imposed by a victorious 
army. She sighs over the suffering which war im- 
poses upon peaceful commerce, though her own 
methods of dealing with peaceful commerce would 
have wrung the conscience of Captain Kidd. She 
denounces the maritime methods of the Allies, 
though in her efforts to defeat them she is deterred 
neither by the rules of war, nor the appeal of hu- 
manity, nor the rights of neutrals. 

It must be admitted, therefore, that it is not the 
cause of peace, or of liberty which preoccupies her 
when in the name of freedom she urges fundamen- 
tal changes in maritime practice. Her manifest ob- 
ject is to shatter an obstacle which hampers her 
ambitions, as more than a hundred years ago it 
hampered the ambitions of the masterful genius 
who was then her oppressor, as he is her model now. 

But not along this path are peace and liberty to 
be obtained. Is it not plain that to paralyse naval 



214 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

power and leave military power uncontrolled would 
be the worst injury which the misuse of interna- 
tional law could inflict upon mankind? 

In the first place it would do nothing to relieve 
the world from the burden of armaments. Fleets 
would still be indispensable. But their importance, 
though not their cost, would diminish. Their of- 
fensive power would be relatively crippled. They 
could no longer be used to exercise pressure upon 
an enemy except in conjunction with an army. 
Thus the nations whose power depended on their 
navies would be partially disarmed, while the na- 
tions whose power depended on their armies would 
be stronger than before. So that aggressive pow- 
ers like Germany and Austria would become more 
formidable than ever in attack, while the unaggres- 
sive powers like America or England would be 
weaker even in defence. 

Imagine, for example, that Germany, in her 
desire to appropriate some Germanised portions of 
South America, came into conflict with the United 
States pver the Monroe doctrine. The United 
States, with her small voluntary army, and with 
her navy bound by the new doctrine, could aim no 
blow at her enemy until she herself had created a 
large army and become for the time being a mili- 
tary community. Her sea-power would be useless 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 215 

save for passive defence. Her land-power would 
not exist. 

But more than this might happen, and worse. 
Let us suppose the desired change to have been ef- 
fected. Let us suppose that the maritime nations, 
accepting the new situation, thought themselves 
relieved from all necessity of protecting their sea- 
borne commerce, and arranged their programmes 
of naval shipbuilding accordingly. For some time 
war, when it occurred, would probably proceed on 
legal lines. Commerce, even hostile commerce, 
destroyed on land, would be safe at sea. But a 
change might happen. Some unforeseen circum- 
stance might make the German General Staff 
think it to be to the interest of its nation to cast to 
the winds the "freedom of the seas" and, in defiance 
of the new law, to destroy the trade of its enemies. 

No one, I suppose, is likely to suggest after our 
experience in this war, after reading German his- 
tories and German theories of politics, that Ger- 
many would be prevented from taking such a step 
by the mere fact that it was a breach of interna- 
tional treaties to which she was a party. She 
would never hesitate — and the only result of the 
cession by the pacific powers of their maritime 
rights would be that the military powers would 
seize the weapon for their own purpose and turn 
it against those who had too hastily abandoned it. 



216 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

So weak is international law unaided by interna- 
tional authority! 

While this state of things is permitted to endure, 
drastic changes in the law of nations may well do 
more harm than good; for if the new rules should 
involve serious limitations of belligerent rights, 
they would be broken as soon as it suited the inter- 
ests of the aggressor; and his victim would be help- 
less because unprepared. Nothing could be more 
disastrous. Law that has no effective sanction is 
commonly useless; law which influences only the 
law-abiding may sometimes be dangerous. For if 
unsupported by powers it hampers everybody but 
the criminal. 

Here we come face to face with the great prob- 
lem which lies behind all the changing aspects of 
this tremendous war. When it is brought to an 
end, how is civilised mankind so to reorganise it- 
self that similar catastrophies shall not be permit- 
ted to recur? 

The problem is insistent, though its full solution 
may be beyond our powers at this stage of devel- 
opment. 

But, surely, even now it is fairly clear that if 
substantial progress is to be made toward securing 
the peace of the world and a free development of 
its constituent nations, the United States of 
America and the British Empire should explicitly 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 217 

recognise, what all instinctively know, that on these 
great subjects they share a common ideal. 

I am well aware that in even hinting at the pos- 
sibility of co-operation between these two coun- 
tries I am treading on delicate ground. The fact 
that American independence was wrested by force 
from Great Britain colours the whole view which 
some Americans take of the "natural" relations 
between the two communities. Others are impa- 
tient of anything which they regard as a senti- 
mental appeal of community of race ; holding, truly 
enough, that in respect of important sections of the 
American people this community of race does not, 
in fact, exist. Others again object to any argu- 
ment based on a similarity of laws and institutions, 
thinking, quite wrongly, that such considerations 
belittle the greatness of America's contribution to 
the political development of the modern world. 

Rightly understood, however, what I have to 
say is quite independent of individual views on any 
of these subjects. It is based on the unquestioned 
fact that the growth of British laws, British forms 
of Government, British literature and modes of 
thought was the slow work of centuries; that 
among the co-heirs of these age-long labours were 
the great men who founded the United States ; and 
that the two branches of the English-speaking peo- 
ples, after their political separation, developed 



218 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

along parallel lines. So it has come about that 
whether they be friendly or quarrelsome, whether 
they rejoice in their agreements or cultivate their 
differences, they can no more get rid of a certain 
fundamental similarity of outlook than children 
born of the same parents and brought up in the 
same home. Whether, therefore, you study po- 
litical thought in Great Britain or America, in 
Canada or in Australia, you will find it presents the 
sharpest and most irreconcilable contrast to polit- 
ical thought in the Prussian Kingdom, or in that 
German Empire into which, with no modification 
of aims or spirit, the Prussian Kingdom has de- 
veloped. Holding, as I do, that this war is essen- 
tially a struggle between these two ideals of an- 
cient growth, I cannot doubt that in the result of 
that struggle America is no less concerned than the 
British Empire. 

Now, if this statement, wfiich represents the 
most unchanging element in my political creed, 
has in it any element of truth, how does it bear 
upon the narrower issues upon which I dwelt in the 
earlier portions of this interview? In other words, 
what are the practical conclusions to be drawn 
from it? 

My own conclusions are these: If in our time 
any substantial effort is to be made toward ensur- 
ing the permanent triumph of the Anglo-Saxon 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 219 

ideal, the great communities which accept it must 
work together. And in working together they 
must bear in mind that law is not enough. Behind 
law there must be power. It is good that arbitra- 
tion should be encouraged. It is good that the ac- 
cepted practices of warfare should become ever 
more humane. It is good that before peace is 
broken the would-be belligerents should be com- 
pelled to discuss their differences in some congress 
of the nations. It is good that the security of the 
smaller states should be fenced round with peculiar 
care. But all the precautions are mere scraps of 
paper unless they can be enforced. We delude our- 
selves if we think we are doing God service merely 
by passing good resolutions. What is needed now, 
and will be needed so long as militarism is uncon- 
quered, is the machinery for enforcing them; and 
the contrivance of such a machinery will tax to its 
utmost the statesmanship of the world. 

I have no contribution to make to the solution 
of the problem. Yet this much seems clear. If 
there is to be any effective sanction behind the de- 
sire of the English-speaking peoples to preserve 
the world's peace and the free development of the 
nations, that sanction must consist largely in the 
potential use of sea-power. So it has been in the 
past, so it will be in the future. For two genera- 
tions and more after the last great war Britain was 



220 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

without a rival on the sea; and it was during this 
period that Belgium became a state, that Greece 
secured her independence, that the unity of Italy 
was achieved, that the South American republics 
were established, that the Monroe doctrine came 
into being. 

To me, therefore, it seems that the lesson to be 
drawn from history by those who love peace, free- 
dom, and security, is not that Britain and America 
should be deprived, or should deprive themselves, 
of the maritime powers they now possess, but that, 
if possible, those powers should be organised in the 
interests of an ideal common to the two states, an 
ideal upon whose progressive realisation the hap- 
piness and peace of the world must, as I read the 
future, so largely depend. 



IX: THE FOUNDATIONS OF A DUR- 
ABLE PEACE 



PART TWO: POLITICAL 



IX 



THE FOUNDATIONS OF A DURABLE 
PEACE 1 

Foreign Office, 
January 13, 1917. 

Sir, 

In sending you a translation of the Allied 
note, I desire to make the following observations 
which you should bring to the notice of the United 
States Government: 

I gather from the general tenor of the Presi- 
dent's note that, while he is animated by an intense 
desire that peace should come soon, and that when 
it comes it should be lasting, he does not, for the 
moment at least, concern himself with the terms 
on which it should be arranged. His Majesty's 
Government entirely share the President's ideals; 
but they feel strongly that the durability of the 
peace must largely depend on its character, and 
that no stable system of international relations can 
be built on foundations which are essentially and 
hopelessly defective. 

1 Dispatch to His Majesty's Ambassador at Washington re- 
specting the Allied Note of January 10, 1917. 

223 



224 A DURABLE PEACE 

This becomes clearly apparent if we consider the 
main conditions which rendered possible the 
calamities from which the world is now suffering. 
These were the existence of a Great Power con- 
sumed with the lust of domination, in the midst of 
a community of nations ill-prepared for defence, 
plentifully supplied indeed with international laws, 
but with no machinery for enforcing them, and 
weakened by the fact that neither the boundaries 
of the various states nor their internal constitution 
harmonised with the aspirations of their constitu- 
ent races, or secured to them just and equal 
treatment. 

That this last evil would be greatly mitigated if 
the Allies secured the changes in the map of Eu- 
rope outlined in their joint note is manifest, and I 
need not labour the point. 

It has been argued, indeed, that the expulsion of 
the Turks from Europe forms no proper or logical 
part of this general scheme. The maintenance of 
the Turkish Empire was, during many genera- 
tions, regarded by statesman of world-wide author- 
ity as essential to the maintenance of European 
peace. Why, it is asked, should the cause of peace 
be now associated with a complete reversal of this 
traditional policy? 

The answer is that circumstances have com- 
pletely changed. It is unnecessary to consider 



A DURABLE PEACE 225 

now whether the creation of a reformed Turkey 
mediating between hostile races in the near East 
was a scheme which, had the Sultan been sincere 
and the Powers united, could ever have been 
realised. It certainly cannot be realised now. The 
Turkey of "Union and Progress" is at least as 
barbarous and is far more aggressive than the 
Turkey of Sultan Abdul Hamid. In the hands of 
Germany it has ceased even in appearance to be a 
bulwark of peace, and is openly used as an in- 
strument of conquest. Under German officers, 
Turkish soldiers are now fighting in lands from 
which they had long been expelled, and a Turkish 
Government, controlled, subsidised, and supported 
by Germany, has been guilty of massacres in 
Armenia and Syria more horrible than any re- 
corded in the history even of those unhappy coun- 
tries. Evidently the interests of peace and the 
claims of nationality alike require that Turkish 
rule over alien races shall, if possible, be brought 
to an end; and we may hope that the expulsion of 
Turkey from Europe will contribute as much to 
the cause of peace as the restoration of Alsace- 
Lorraine to France, of Italia Irredenta to Italy, 
or any of the other territorial changes indicated in 
the Allied note. 

Evidently, however, such territorial rearrange- 
ments, though they may diminish the occasions of 



226 A DURABLE PEACE 

war, provide no sufficient security against its 
recurrence. If Germany, or rather those in Ger- 
many who mould its opinions and control its des- 
tinies, again set out to dominate the world, they 
may find that by the new order of things the 
adventure is made more difficult, but hardly that it 
is made impossible. They may still have ready to 
their hand a political system organised through 
and through on a military basis; they may still 
accumulate vast stores of military equipment ; they 
may still perfect their methods of attack, so that 
their more pacific neighbours will be struck down 
before they can prepare themselves for defence. 
If so, Europe when the war is over will be far 
poorer in men, in money, and in mutual good- 
will than it was when the war began, but it will 
not be safer; and the hopes for the future of the 
world entertained by the President will be as far 
as ever from fulfilment. 

There are those who think that for this disease 
international treaties and international laws may 
provide a sufficient cure. But such persons have 
ill-learned the lessons so clearly taught by recent 
history. While other nations, notably the United 
States of America and Britain, were striving by 
treaties of arbitration to make sure that no chance 
quarrel should mar the peace they desired to make 
perpetual, Germany stood aloof. Her historians 



A DURABLE PEACE 227 

and philosophers preached the splendours of war; 
power was proclaimed as the true end of the State ; 
the General Staff forged with untiring industry 
the weapons by which, at the appointed moment, 
power might be achieved. These facts proved 
clearly enough that treaty arrangements for main- 
taining peace were not likely to find much favour 
at Berlin; they did not prove that such treaties, 
once made, could be utterly ineffectual. This be- 
came evident only when war had broken out; 
though the demonstration, when it came, was over- 
whelming. So long as Germany remains the 
Germany which, without a shadow of justification, 
overran and barbarously ill-treated a country it 
was pledged to defend, no state can regard its 
rights as secure if they have no better protection 
than a solemn treaty. 

The case is made worse by the reflection that 
these methods of calculated brutality were de- 
signed by the Central Powers not merely to crush 
to the dust those with whom they were at war, 
but to intimidate those with whom they were still 
at peace. Belgium was not only a victim: it was 
an example. Neutrals were intended to note the 
outrages which accompanied its conquest, the reign 
of terror which followed on its occupation, the 
deportation of a portion of its population, the 
cruel oppression of the remainder. And lest 



228 A DURABLE PEACE 

nations happily protected, either by British fleets 
or by their own, from German armies, should sup- 
pose themselves safe from German methods, the 
submarine has (within its limits) assiduously imi- 
tated the barbaric practices of the sister service. 
The War Staffs of the Central Powers are well 
content to horrify the world if at the same time 
they can terrorise it. 

If, then, the Central Powers succeed it will be 
to methods like these that they will owe their suc- 
cess. How can any reform of international rela- 
tions be based on a peace thus obtained? Such a 
peace would represent the triumph of all the forces 
which make war certain and make it brutal. It 
would advertise the futility of all the methods on 
which civilisation relies to eliminate the occasions 
of international dispute and to mitigate their 
ferocity. Germany and Austria made the present 
war inevitable by attacking the rights of one small 
state, and they gained their initial triumphs by 
violating the treaty-guarded territories of another. 
Are small states going to find in them their future 
protectors, or in treaties made by them a bulwark 
against aggression? Terrorism by land and sea 
will have proved itself the instrument of victory. 
Are the victors likely to abandon it on the appeal 
of the neutrals? If existing treaties are no more 
than scraps of paper, can fresh treaties help us? 



A DURABLE PEACE 229 

If the violation of the most fundamental canons 
of international law be crowned with success, will 
it not be in vain that the assembled nations labour 
to improve their code? None will profit by their 
rules but the criminals who break them. It is those 
who keep them that will suffer. 

Though, therefore, the people of this country 
share to the full the desire of the President for 
peace, they do not believe that peace can be dur- 
able if it be not based on the success of the Allied 
cause. For a durable peace can hardly be expected 
unless three conditions are fulfilled. The first |is 
that the existing causes of international unrest 
should be as far as possible removed or weakened. 
The second is that the aggressive aims and the 
unscrupulous methods of the Central Powers 
should fall into disrepute among their own peoples. 
The third is that behind international law, and be- 
hind all treaty arrangements for preventing or 
limiting hostilities, some form of international 
sanction should be devised which would give pause 
to the hardiest aggressor. These conditions may 
be difficult of fulfilment, but we believe them to be 
in general harmony with the President's ideals, 
and we are confident that none of them can be 
satisfied, even imperfectly, unless peace be secured 
on the general lines indicated (so far as Europe is 
concerned) in the joint note. Therefore it is that 



230 A DURABLE PEACE 

this country has made, is making, and is prepared 
to make sacrifices of blood and treasure unparal- 
leled in its history. It bears these heavy burdens 
not merely that it may thus fulfil its treaty obliga- 
tions, nor yet that it may secure a barren triumph 
of one group of nations over another. It bears 
them because it firmly believes that on the success 
of the Allies depend the prospects of peaceful civili- 
sation and of those international reforms which 
the best thinkers of the New World, as of the Old, 
dare to hope may follow on the cessation of our 
present calamities. 

I am, with great truth and respect, Sir, 
Your Excellency's most obedient 
humble servant, 

Arthur James Balfour. 



PART TWO: POLITICAL 
X: A BRIEF NOTE ONI ZIONISM 



A BRIEF NOTE ON ZIONISM 1 

Whether it be helpful for one who is not a Jew, 
either by race or religion, to say even the briefest 
word by way of introduction to a book on Zionism 
is, in my own opinion, doubtful. But my friend, 
M. Nahum Sokolow, tells me that I long ago gave 
him reason to expect that, when the time came, I 
would render him this small measure of assistance ; 
and if he attaches value to it, I cannot allow my 
personal doubts as to its value to stand in his way. 
The only qualification I possess for this particu- 
lar task is that I have always been greatly inter- 
ested in the Jewish question, and that in the early 
years of this century, when anti-Semitism in East- 
ern Europe was in an acute stage, I did my best 
to support a scheme devised by Mr. Chamberlain, 
then Colonial Secretary, for creating a Jewish 
settlement in East Africa, under the British flag. 
There it was hoped that Jews fleeing from persecu- 
tion might found a community where, in harmony 

1 Being the Introduction to The History of Zionism, 1600- 
1918, by Nahum Sokolow. 

233 



234 A BRIEF NOTE ON ZIONISM 

with their own religion, development on traditional 
lines might (we thought) peacefully proceed with- 
out external interruption, and free from fears of 
violence. 

The scheme was certainly well-intentioned, and 
had, I think, many merits. But it had one serious 
defect. It was not Zionism. It attempted to find 
a home for men of Jewish religion and Jewish race 
in a region far removed from the country where 
that race was nurtured and that religion came into 
being. Conversations I held with Dr. Weizmann 
in January 1906 convinced me that history could 
not thus be ignored, and that if a home was to be 
sought for the Jewish people, homeless now for 
nearly nineteen hundred years, it was only in 
Palestine that it could be found. 

But why, it may be asked, is local sentiment to be 
more considered in the case of the Jew than (say) 
in that of the Christian or the Buddhist? All his- 
toric religions rouse feelings which cluster round 
places made memorable by the words and deeds, 
the lives and deaths, of those who brought them into 
being. And though without doubt these feelings 
should always be treated with respect, no one sug- 
gests that the regions where these venerable sites 
are to be found should, of set purpose and with 
much anxious contrivance, be colonised by the 
spiritual descendants of those who originally made 






A BRIEF NOTE ON ZIONISM 235 

them famous. If the centuries have brought no 
change of ownership or occupancy we are well con- 
tent. But if it be otherwise, we make no effort to 
reverse the course of history. None suggest that 
we should plant Buddhist colonies in the plains of 
India, or renew in favour of Christendom the 
crusading adventures of our mediaeval ancestors. 
Yet, if this be wisdom when we are dealing with 
Buddhism and Christianity, why, it may be asked, 
is it not also wisdom when we are dealing with 
Judaism and the Jews? 

The answer is, that the cases are not parallel. 
The position of the Jews is unique. For them race, 
religion and country are inter-related, as they are 
inter-related in the case of no other race, no other 
religion, and no other country on earth. In no 
other case are the believers in one of the greatest 
religions of the world to be found (speaking 
broadly) only among the members of a single small 
people; in the case of no other religion is its past 
development so intimately bound up with the long 
political history of a petty territory wedged in be- 
tween states more powerful far than it could ever 
be; in the case of no other religion are its aspira- 
tions and hopes expressed in language and imagery 
so utterly dependent for their meaning on the con- 
viction that only from this one land, only through 
this one history, only by this one people is full 



236 A BRIEF NOTE ON ZIONISM 

religious knowledge to be spread through all the 
world. By a strange and most unhappy fate it is 
this people of all others which, retaining to the full 
its racial self -consciousness, has been severed from 
its home, has wandered into all lands, and has no- 
where been able to create for itself an organised 
social commonwealth. Only Zionism — so at least 
Zionists believe — can provide some mitigation of 
this great tragedy. 

Doubtless there are difficulties, doubtless there 
are objections — great difficulties, very real objec- 
tions. And it is, I suspect, among the Jews them- 
selves that these are most acutely felt. Yet no one 
can reasonably doubt that if, as I believe, Zionism 
can be developed into a working scheme, the bene- 
fit it would bring to the Jewish people, especially 
perhaps to that section of it which most deserves 
our pity, would be great and lasting. It is not 
merely that large numbers of them would thus find 
a refuge from religious and social persecution; but 
that they would bear corporate responsibilities 
and enjoy corporate opportunities of a kind which, 
from the nature of the case, they can never possess 
as citizens of any non- Jewish state. It is charged 
against them by their critics that they now 
employ their great gifts to exploit for personal 
ends a civilisation which they have not created, in 
communities they do little to maintain. The accu- 






A BRIEF NOTE ON ZIONISM 237 

sation thus formulated is manifestly false. But it 
is no doubt true that in large parts of Europe their 
loyalty to the state in which they dwell is (to put it 
mildly) feeble compared with their loyalty to their 
religion and their race. How indeed could it be 
otherwise ? In none of the regions of which I speak 
have they been given the advantage of equal citi- 
zenship, in some they have been given no right of 
citizenship at all. Great suffering is the inevitable 
result; but not suffering alone. Other evils follow 
which aggravate the original mischief. Constant 
oppression, with occasional outbursts of violent 
persecution, are apt either to crush their victims, or 
to develop in them self -protecting qualities which 
do not always assume an attractive shape. The 
Jews have never been crushed. Neither cruelty 
nor contempt, neither unequal laws nor illegal op- 
pression, have ever broken their spirit or shattered 
their unconquerable hopes. But it may well be true 
that, where they have been compelled to live among 
their neighbours as if these were their enemies, they 
have often obtained, and sometimes deserved, the 
reputation of being undesirable citizens. Nor is 
this surprising. If you oblige many men to be 
moneylenders, some will assuredly be usurers. If 
you treat an important section of the community 
as outcasts, they will hardly shine as patriots. Thus 



238 A BRIEF NOTE ON ZIONISM 

does intolerance blindly labour to create the justi- 
fication for its own excesses. 

It seems evident that, for these and other reasons, 
Zionism will mitigate the lot and elevate the status 
of no negligible fraction of the Jewish race. Those 
who go to Palestine will not be like those who now 
migrate to London or New York. They will not 
be animated merely by the desire to lead in happier 
surroundings the kind of life they formerly led in 
Eastern Europe. They will go in order to join a 
civil community which completely harmonises with 
their historical and religious sentiments: a com- 
munity bound to the land it inhabits by something 
deeper even than custom : a community whose mem- 
bers will suffer from no divided loyalty, nor any 
temptation to hate the laws under which they are 
forced to live. To them the material gain should 
be great; but surely the spiritual gain will be 
greater still. 

But these, it will be said, are not the only Jews 
whose welfare we have to consider. Granting, if 
only for argument's sake, that Zionism will on them 
confer a benefit, will it not inflict an injury upon 
others who, though Jews by descent, and often by 
religion, desire wholly to identify themselves with 
the life of the country wherein they have made 
their home ? Among these are to be found some of 
the most gifted members of a gifted race. Their 



A BRIEF NOTE ON ZIONISM 239 

ranks contain (at least, so I think) more than their 
proportionate share of the world's supply of men 
distinguished in science and philosophy, literature 
and art, medicine, politics and law. (Of finance 
and business I need say nothing. ) 

Now there is no doubt that many of this class 
look with a certain measure of suspicion and even 
dislike upon the Zionist movement. They fear that 
it will adversely affect their position in the country 
of their adoption. The great majority of them 
have no desire to settle in Palestine. Even suppos- 
ing a Zionist community were established, they 
would not join it. But they seem to think (if I 
understand them rightly) that so soon as such a 
community came into being men of Jewish blood, 
still more men of Jewish religion, would be regard- 
ed by unkindly critics as out of place elsewhere. 
Their ancient home having been restored to them, 
they would be expected to reside there. 

I cannot share these fears. I do not deny that, 
in some countries where legal equality is firmly es- 
tablished, Jews may still be regarded with a certain 
measure of prejudice. But this prejudice, where it 
exists, is not due to Zionism, nor will Zionism em- 
bitter it. The tendency should surely be the other 
way. Everything which assimilates the national 
and international status of the Jews to that of other 
races ought to mitigate what remains of ancient 



240 A BRIEF NOTE ON ZIONISM 

antipathies: and evidently this assimilation would 
be promoted by giving them that which all other 
nations possess — a local habitation and a national 
home. 

On this aspect of the subject I need perhaps 
say no more. The future of Zionism depends on 
deeper causes than these. That it will settle the 
"Jewish question" I dare not hope. But that it will 
tend to promote that mutual sympathy and com- 
prehension which is the only sure basis of tolera- 
tion I firmly believe. Few, I think, of M. Soko- 
low's readers, be they Jew or be they Christian, 
will rise from the perusal of the impressive story 
which he has told so fully and so well, without feel- 
ing that Zionism differs from ordinary philan- 
thropic efforts in the depth and complexity of its 
appeal. That it will do a great spiritual and ma- 
terial work for that portion of the race which, for 
a second time in history, returns to its ancient home 
is, I think, obvious. But its effects will not be 
limited to a narrow strip of territory on the east- 
ern shores of the Mediterranean sea. They will 
be world-wide. And among them I reckon a more 
complete and friendly amalgamation between the 
Jews who neither can, nor will, return to Pales- 
tine and the populations of their adopted countries. 
If I am right, then, indeed, Zionism is no mere 
local adventure, but a serious attempt to mitigate 



A BRIEF NOTE ON ZIONISM 241 

the age-long miseries created for Western civilisa- 
tion by the presence in its midst of a population 
too long regarded as alien and even hostile, which 
it has been equally unable to expel or to absorb. 
Surely, for this if for no other reason, Zionism 
should be supported by all men of good-will, what- 
ever their country and whatever their creed. 



THE END 



